OnPoint: Government Portfolios for Dummies
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Can't speak for the public service in general but my old dept was heavily weighted towards law, public policy, politics, philosophy, history etc among policy advisers - backgrounds that ensure you can write or think well, but don't require you to be able to work with statistics or Excel. A few exceptions had maths or economics. I expect this varies depending on the subject matter, and research units would have more empirical-minded staff. But it's not senior advisers dictating IT or public records policy within a department, it's information services. The further up the policy food chain you are, the more insulated you are from having to deal with IT issues because you have more access to admin support. The twink example I mentioned above was someone fairly senior, who I suspect had a miscommunication with someone he thought would do his photocopying for him.
Anyway, the whole business illustrates to me the importance of a back-office function within departments that is senior enough to drive high-level departmental practices and resourced well enough to help advisers on the ground comply with those practices. You could say a good road code, plus traffic cops, plus driving instructors.
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LeslieGoodliffe, in reply to
I've never tried to copy and paste the URL for a search result. A keyword search with fewer terms - I should have truncated minister - is closer to my original result:
http://nzlc.natlib.govt.nz/vwebv/searchResults?searchId=274&recPointer=0&searchType=1&sortBy=PUB_DATE_DESC.
Still not much for 2011, though. -
LeslieGoodliffe, in reply to
How did you successfully copy and paste the results of search? I've tried and failed twice. Honestly, NDHA has about 25 2008 briefing documents stored and catalogued in New Zealand Libraries Catalogue. I don't know where the 2011 documents are. Govt departments increasing efficiency under National appears to involve relentless reduction of publication programmes and a disregard for making conventionally published items reliably available.
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There are a number of newer briefings for incoming ministers scattered around in other locations. For example:
http://www.mbie.govt.nz/about-us/publications/BIMs/2013-BIMs
A search like this turns up plenty of others:
https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=site:+govt.nz+briefing+for+incoming
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