The Auditor-General is dead right

NewstalkZB reports:

New Zealand’s Auditor-General has spoken out against Government agencies, claiming their reporting produces ‘a lot of rubbish’.

John Ryan told the Finance Select Committee that agencies like to tick off ‘project milestones’, but their actual accomplishments are ‘questionable’.

He says the general public doesn’t get to see or experience the outcomes of these reported milestones.

“The public really wants to know what outcomes they’re getting from these projects, not whether they’re managing it on a day-to-day basis. That’s much more than management activity.”

Government needs to be about outcomes, not outputs or even worse inputs.

We did have a Government heading that way under Key and English. They had outcome based targets for Better Public Services. But the Ardern Government got rid of these, and instead focused on how much money they could spend, instead of what that money achieved.