Brian Easton: Accountability And Archives New Zealand

Was another IT debacle inevitable given the management arrangements?

In February 20022, Archives New Zealand (ANZ) switched its electronic access to the nation’s public records from ‘Archway’ to the new Collections system, also known as ‘AIMS’ (Archives Integrated Management System). There was immediate outrage by users. As Archives New Zealand politely said: ‘Ongoing issues with poor functionality, bugs, and unplanned disruptions in service caused increasing levels of dissatisfaction from users and government agencies.’

Brian Easton: The Fashion For Generic Management Is Not Working.

The public service is suffering from the downgrading of the role of professionals, experts and those at the workface with the public.

There is a management fashion that believes that by imposing layers of generic managers, public spending will become more efficient because they will control the professionals, who cannot be trusted. It is true that professionals often have objectives which are dismissive of fiscal considerations – objectives like the welfare of those they are working for – and that some cannot be trusted not to act in their commercial interests. But there is surprisingly little evidence that the layers of generic management have worked well – most managers are not very good at evaluating themselves – and there are numerous anecdotes of them adding to costs with bullshit jobs or those which actually reduce the effectiveness of the professionals on the front line.