Auditor-General John Ryan wants his office to be a greater champion for integrity. Photo / Mark Mitchell
It may be too soon to tell how the public spending watchdog John Ryan will be remembered when his term finishes - but there are signs he is starting to get under the skin of the Government.
And looking at his work plan for the current year, it is easy to see why.
Quite apart from the financial audits for public organisations, there are discretionary projects for scrutiny, chosen by the Auditor-General, which focus on some key areas for the Government:
• The role of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet in co-ordinating the Covid-19 response;
• How well Treasury's Wellbeing report, due in November, describes changes to wellbeing;
• Reviewing the effectiveness of the child poverty work programme;
• How effectively the Ministry of Education understands and addresses educational disparities;
• How mental health and addiction services are meeting the needs of young people;
• How well-placed the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development is to lead the housing and urban development system;
• Examining how Treaty settlement commitments are being monitored and honoured;
• How well the public sector is performing in Auckland.
The projects are in addition to the mandatory audits of 3360 public organisations, ranging from school boards to Air New Zealand, research projects and various inquiries that arise through events.
Ryan's reports are largely direct in their language and do not require much reading between the lines.
Last week he issued a letter that was bluntly critical of how the cost of living payments had been administered and in which he described as "unacceptable" the notion that IRD may never know how many people had been wrongly given money.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern publicly disagreed with aspects of it and did not concede that any criticism was warranted.
Ryan says he is always alert to the tone of his reports.
"I am extremely conscious of the tone and I think one of the hallmarks of the Auditor-General over the years has been a strong sense of balance," he tells the Herald.
"You review the facts, you draw a conclusion but you also see the context that that conclusion is drawn in and provide as much balance to your conclusion as you can. I think that's a really important part of the role," Ryan said.
"To have impact, you need to be seen to be fair in what you say as well as direct."
He said he has to put aside the fact that reports will be used politically.
"Part of my role is definitely to call it as it is."
Quite often he concluded there had been a job well done but that didn't get widely reported.
For example? The IT transformation project at Inland Revenue.
Ryan is midway through his seven-year term. Since 2001 it has been a single term so there is no temptation to go easy with the criticism in order to seek reappointment.
The Auditor-General is answerable to Parliament, not to a minister or Government.
Ryan was appointed in 2018. He is the son and grandson of milkmen from Petone and went to Hutt Valley High, then Victoria University.
He has worked in a swathe of private and public sector agencies, including Price Waterhouse, Solid Energy, the Ministry of Justice, the Department of Corrections, the Building Industry Association and the Ministry for Primary Industries.
And he has been on governance boards for the Royal New Zealand Ballet, Wellington's Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts, the Wellington Jazz Festival and a Kapiti astro-turf facility.
The gallery of predecessors in the foyer is a reminder of the historic significance of the office and the importance of its independence.
The very first Auditor-General, Charles Knight, was a hero in the classic sense. He was on a ship on his way to Adelaide in 1841 when, near the end of the voyage, the captain became increasingly drunk and put the ship in peril. Knight took charge, safely navigating the ship to Adelaide.
George Grey was on board and offered him work in South Australia, where he became Governor, and in New Zealand when he became Governor in 1845.
There is an odd rogue among them: Jeff Chapman was jailed in 1997 for committing fraud against ACC and the Audit Office.
So how is Ryan putting his stamp on the office? Partly it is in how and when the office gets involved.
He does not want the office to be isolated and making judgments after the event.
"The line I use internally is I want us to be still independent but much more the referee on the field, than the TMO, if you like a sporting analogy, up in the stands."
Referees often talked to players during the course of play in trying to avoid penalties, he said.
"I think we'll always have the TMO role. Every now and then the game will stop and people will turn to the Auditor-General and say 'well what's your view?' But I am very keen for us to actually influence things as they are going."
That is why he instigated reports in the midst of the Covid-19 response into PPE (personal protective equipment), the vaccination roll-out and the wages subsidy.
"We thought getting involved earlier allowed agencies to fix things that we found and get a better service ultimately for the public."
He believes the early action was welcomed by the agencies involved.
The ability to impact on policy earlier was also behind the Auditor-General's decision to make submissions on the bills restructuring the health system and setting up the Three Waters reforms.
In both cases, there was no judgment on the policies themselves because that is not part of his remit. The concern of his office was on weaknesses in the accountability mechanisms.
And as noted in the work plan, the office will take a particular interest in sectors undergoing major changes, using performance data against which to track progress.
"Significant reform presents risk to performance. It is easy to underestimate the complexity, cost and time to transition and implement reforms which can result in disruption of service and losses in productivity and capability."
Ryan also wants to encourage public organisations to focus more on performance reporting.
New Zealand had a world-class system to account for where money was being spent across government.
"What we don't see on the other side is 'what did we get for that money?' For the $130-plus billion a year, what got better, what got worse, how are things trending? Where is the reporting on that?" Ryan said.
"We really want to push quite hard on agencies to really hold themselves to account for their performance and to connect that to the public in what they are interested in seeing the agency do."
He wanted to see, for example, not just the number of contracts an agency signed but what it got for them.
And he wanted the public to be given a better idea of what progress was being made across sectors, for example in Justice.
"We see whole sectors working together on a joint outcome, and Parliament and the public should be able to see how they are going with that."
Ryan said the New Zealand public's trust in the public sector was high and a source of pride but there were some groups with lower trust, including people with disabilities and Māori.
"We think that in part, you can build trust by having a really accountable public sector, that the public feel they are accountable to them."
He says that one of the most important reports he has published was in July about Māori perspectives on accountability, and this month the Office of the Auditor General appointed its first director of Māori engagement.
Ryan also has plans for the Office of the Auditor-General to place a greater emphasis on overt integrity.
"I want the office to be seen much more as a champion in that space."
In June he published what is called an integrity framework - good practice guidance - for leadership and governance groups to ensure large agencies were operating with integrity.
It covers such things as transparency, ethical leadership and codes of conduct, and Ryan says the office will be conducting integrity audits.
"It's not just policies but it's culture, monitoring systems; how does the whole thing fit together and one of the key aspects of that is how do leaders set tone from the top," Ryan said.
"From my point of view, public servants want to get it right and the more we can help them, the better."
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