Other news
•
A Manager, PMO has been appointed and will start on 21 November
•
Interviews are taking place w/c 31 October for two Project Coordinators
•
The response to the Senior Programme Coordinator was not great Withheld under s.9(2)(g)(i)
. This interview will take place w/c 31 October.
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People and Culture • We advertised 10 positions this month, including 2 internal-only roles. We received 51
applications for the 8 of the roles advertised.
• 60 offers were made to Electorate Managers as well as 20 offers for other positions (not
including casuals)
• 4 Approvals to Appoint are in progress before offer documents can be issued.
• Started to review and update HR processes and systems in preparation for the delivery of the
By-Election.
• Participated in the Voting Services Simulation as required.
Preparing for the future
Enterprise Services
• A review of the Enterprise Services Business Plans (Corporate Services and IT) has been done
by the ES DCE and Managers and a refresh of this will be completed over the next few months.
Information Technology
• First of the Cyber smart week drop-in sessions was successfully held.
• Recruitment for new IT positions is progressing with the position descriptions currently being
finalised.
Finance, Procurement and Property
• The drafting of the updated procurement policy, procedures and templates is well under way
and is nearly ready for an internal review prior to any consultation/review by the wider
organisation.
• Finance is working with Walkerscott to enhance the financial reports that were implemented
on go-live of the FMIS, and to create some new reports. These are required to efficiently
produce the monthly management and board reports, and ad hoc analysis.
• Closing of the Hamilton and Dunedin regional offices to ensure they are moved out of their
premises before the end of their respective lease is under way in conjunction with ECE and IT.
We are looking at co-locating these offices with other government agencies or community
groups rather than lease own premises.
People and Culture • The draft Health, Safety and Wellbeing Policy and high-level consultation timeline was referred
to the Board for endorsement and is due to go out for consultation soon.
• Continued support to the Operating Model Refresh and SnapHire implementation work.
• Progressed work with Humankind to develop Position Descriptions to support the business
with the “Capability Uplift” work.
• Presented the draft Pay Gap Action Plan to ELT and sent it to the Board for endorsement at the
November Board meeting.
• Preparing to roll out the Code of Conduct across the Commission.
Building relationships and understanding
Finance, Procurement and Property
• The Procurement team have begun discussions with the business on the procurement
pipelines for their individual cost centre or business units so they are aware of timings and can
plan for it.
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Issues under management
Recruiting high quality permanent staff remains difficult in current job market. The following roles
have been advertised and readvertised with no success.
• Cyber Security Analyst
• Senior Systems Administrator.
Risks
Work exceeds internal capability and capacity to deliver IF there are not enough internal resources available from a capacity and capability perspective
THEN the technology assets required for GE2023 will not be delivered to sufficient quality in a
timely and cost-effective manner that meets the needs of the general election.
Large amount of change occurring IF the large amount of organisational and process change occurring at the Commission is not well
managed and supported
THEN Enterprise Services’ ability to deliver key services to the
Commission may be impacted.
People management
TOIL or excess
• Two IT staff in the unit have annual leave balances of 25 days or more.
annual leave
This is the same as last month. Both staff have plans for extended leave
in place for the next six months
• TOIL balance for the whole IT team is 78.5 hours. This is a reduction of
14.5 hours since last month. Staff are aware that this should (where
possible) be taken before reward or annual leave.
• Two members of the Finance, Property and Procurement have leave in
excess of 25 days. A leave plan has been discussed and agreed with
them.
• One employee in People and Culture has leave exceeding 25 days.
• Two employees in People and Culture have TOIL of a couple of days
after delivering the Remuneration and Performance Round. Employees
will be encouraged to take this time as soon as possible.
Staff turnover
• 2 staff in IT have resigned
• Manager Finance, Property and Procurement (Neil) has resigned, with
his last day on 24 November. We should have a contractor secured to
start the week beginning 7 November as Michael is having 4 weeks sick
leave from 9 November.
Staff engagement
• 100% of Enterprise Services completed the Have Your Say 2022
engagement survey. This week the Enterprise Services managers will
get more detail by team on the results.
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Advisory opinions Six advisory opinion requests received in October.
Official Information Act requests responded to in October
Requestor
Topic
Response Time
Individual
The number of voters in Napier that have been
8WD
deregistered since the last General Election,
including those that have re-enrolled
Individual
Regarding the 2017 and 2020 General Elections:
On-going
- A detailed list of any and all cyber-attack attempts
on the Commission's election management
systems.
Individual
Any communications between 1 September 2022
On-going
and 19 October 2022:
1) Between your chief executive or other executive
manager and your communications/media staff
regarding how media queries are dealt with.
2) From the office of your relevant minister
regarding how media queries are dealt with.
Parliamentary questions
Requestor
Question
Date of
Response
David Seymour
What team building exercises or courses, if any,
06/10/2022
MP
have been offered in 2022 to the staff of the
departments, agencies, and entities for which the
Minister is responsible, if any, and if any team
building exercises or courses have been offered to
staff, how many staff, if any, participated in those
team-building exercises or courses?
David Seymour
What team building exercises or courses, if any,
06/10/2022
MP
have been offered in 2022 to the staff of the
departments, agencies, and entities for which the
Minister is responsible, if any, and if any team
building exercises or courses have been offered to
staff, what funded activities, if any, did these team-
building exercises or courses involve?
David Seymour
What team building exercises or courses, if any,
06/10/2022
MP
have been offered in 2022 to the staff of the
departments, agencies, and entities for which the
Minister is responsible, if any, and if any team
building exercises or courses have been offered to
staff, what was the total and per-attendee costs, if
any, of these team building exercises or courses?
Melissa Lee MP
Has the Minister or any of their reporting
11/10/2022
departments, entities and working groups in their
Page 2 of 3
respective portfolio contracted with Dialogue 22
and/or its CEO Hon Kris Faafoi; if so, what is the
breakdown by cost, reason and organisation?
Party administration and compliance • The Board approved the registration of DemocracyNZ and its logo.
• Progressing Freedom New Zealand’s application to register a party and logo.
• Progressing New Nation Party’s application to register a party and logo.
• Progressing New Conservative’s and TOP’s applications to substitute their existing logos.
Issues under management • Awaiting detailed judgment of the High Court in the second SFO case re donations in which 3
defendants have been found guilty. SFO have sought leave to appeal re: NZ First Foundation
case. The Minister has approved the introduction of an SOP to the Electoral Amendment Bill to
clarify the meaning of party donation and to introduce a new offence for failure to transmit a
donation.
• Possible SOPS re MEO as bill continues through parliamentary stages.
Risks No new or significantly changed risks.
People management
TOIL or excess
• 4 people in the team have leave balances of more than 25 days.
annual leave
Leave plans for the Christmas period are under discussion.
Staff engagement
• 2022 staff survey team session scheduled.
Resourcing
• Recruitment underway for fixed-term role budgeted for. Offer
made to preferred applicant.
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• We welcomed Murali Kumar, who is supporting the Auckland and Whangarei teams, as
acting Community Engagement Manager Auckland until this role is filled.
• Community Engagement vacancies still to be filled in Auckland plus the 2 CE manager roles
for Auckland and Central. Whangarei are in the process of completing interviews.
• The Christchurch office have reconfigured the office space, to better serve the two
functions of enrolment processing and the new permanent Community Engagement team.
• We have successfully secured 2 new staff for the Enrolment Support roles in Lower Hutt,
starting on 7 November.
Preparing for an election
Local Body Election 2022
• Special Vote Declarations completed successfully on 14 October which concluded the LBE
processing workloads
• Final processing statistics for LBE 2022 are:
o 336,719 enrolment forms processed between 4 July 2022 and 10 October.
o That is an average of 24,051 forms per week over 14 weeks.
o Of that number, 201,760 (59.9%) were submitted online and 134,959 were paper.
o We processed 133,657 returned Update Packs (GNAs)
o We completed 25,657 special vote checks between 20 September and 13 October
• Final Community Engagement numbers were:
o 1,714 separate community engagement activities were completed during the
campaign
o Of those 1,714 were in-person engagements, and 564 were digital
• Wellington staff who were located at Gibson Sheat are not back in the Lower Hutt office
and all staff have recommenced their WFH arrangements.
• Review activities (lessons learnt) are underway.
Hamilton West by-election
ECE planning is being finalized for the Hamilton West by-election now with confirmed dates in
place which includes the centralized processing, public enquiries and community engagement
plans.
Public and stakeholder information is being prepared to raise awareness of the by-election and
how, when and where to enrol and vote. Planned activity includes an advertising campaign,
media, social media and stakeholder engagement, and content for print collateral and online that
will be available in other languages and alternate formats for disabled people.
Election Access Fund communications
Applications to the Election Access Fund opened on 31 October. Information about the Fund, and
how to apply, was published at elections.nz. Information is available in alternate formats and in
English and te reo Māori. Online and paper application forms were created and tested, along with
other forms to support people to apply. Information was sent to media, political parties, disability
groups and other interested stakeholders. Pro-active and re-active FAQs were prepared to support
the 0800 service, internal enquiries teams and to respond to media questions or interview
requests. An advertising campaign is being prepared to help raise awareness about the Fund
between now and the general election.
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Always on Online enrolment continues to be supported with
Always On advertising to reach people who
need to enrol or update their details. This activity targets people who have moved house or who
have recently become eligible to enrol to vote and prompts them to enrol or update their details.
Preparation for GE2023
• ECE Hamilton staff will be relocated to the Hamilton West Electorate HQ while longer term
property needs are being assessed
• Conversations have begun in some regions for GE2023 with our Voting services colleagues,
particular focus on targeted communities and recruitment opportunities.
• The Large Print Version - Get ready to Vote form – has been distributed to key
stakeholders, including Blind low Vision NZ – who assisted in its co-design.
Māori Electoral Option The project roadmap was approved by the Programme Board at its October meeting. It also
approved removal of the Parliamentary by-election/local body election exception from scope of
the 31 March implementation. The first time this scenario could apply would be during the 2025
Local Body Elections. Overall project status remains AMBER due to uncertainty about the outcome
of the legislative process and the short timeframe for delivery.
MIKE system requirements have been confirmed and provided to Catalyst for sizing. Some delay
in confirming a statement of work with Catalyst is expected due to by-election activities and the
MIKE OS upgrade. An initial meeting has been held with the Commission’s print advisor to discuss
print requirements and commence sourcing quotes for the April mailout, paper for the mailout
brochure has since been ordered to ensure availability. We are continuing to work with NZ Post on
the timeline for the mailout. Implementation of macrons in MIKE is a dependency for the mailout
data extract, this has been reviewed with IT and will need to be implemented by 15 February
2023.
Recruitment for a Business Analyst and a Project Lead – Partnerships and Contracts (fixed term
roles) is ongoing.
Lisé Hutcheon started with the communications and education team as a Senior Adviser at the end
of September to prepare a communications strategy for the Māori electoral option public
information campaign. Planning is underway with our research partner to hold focus groups with
Māori and advice has been sought from our advertising partner on a creative approach for the
campaign.
Preparing for the future
ECE business improvement programme
The programme timeframe has been re-baselined to reflect resource availability in the regions.
Good progress on the business improvement initiatives in conjunction with GE23, MEO23, LBE22
and Hamilton West by-election. Key highlights were:
• Roll cleanse processes: Analysis work on TSR and the solution options paper for management
reporting are in good progress. Discovery on the person type ‘other’ category will kick off in
November.
Page 3 of 6
• Data integrity measures initiative aims to articulate critical measures for integrity assurance at
a strategic level. The Discovery report has been reviewed and the recommendations have been
endorsed. The development work will commence when the data capability become available.
• Unpublished process requirements have been completed. It was confirmed that Legal has
access to the required information in MIKE.
• Overseas elector process: Discovery report has been approved, and the recommendations will
be incorporated into the GE23 enrolment campaign.
• Māori Macrons: Macrons development is near completion in MIKE, aiming to go live on the 15
February when the ERSA development is completed. Request has been made to access an IT
environment, allowing ECE to commence the training development in November. Meeting
with NZ Post was held on 4 October, to discuss implementing macrons on NZPost
correspondence prior to the MEO campaign.
• Correspondence review has been completed, with generic EC contact details, signature, and
contents of 28 letters updated in MIKE. The last set of NZ Post letters have also been updated
on the 27 October.
• NZPost Change My Address reporting work was kicked off in October, to assess options of
leveraging the information in our enrolment processing.
• Business processes are being updated to reflect the new regional processing team structure.
Further work will be planned to develop the detailed procedures.
• Testing of the new enrolment dashboard is underway, incorporating feedback from SMEs and
LBE lessons learned.
Telnet contract for 0800 call centre services
The negotiation with Telnet has been completed, and the contract variations drafted. As we are
seeking to extension the Master Service Agreement established in 2012, the total Whole of Life
Contract value exceeds the CEO financial delegation, a Board paper is prepared to seek approval
for the 20-month contract extension until June 2024. The planning for the full RFP processing will
start in November 2022.
Building relationships and understanding
Strategic communications
A suite of resources has been developed to share with staff to support the embedding of the
overarching Communications and Engagement Strategy in work across the Commission, including
a strategy on a page, and a guide on how to use the Strategy and message house. The Strategy will
go out to staff over the next few weeks.
Work also continues on an implementation plan setting out activity to tell our story to
stakeholders and raise the profile of the Commission in election year, using the Strategy as a
guide. The draft implementation plan has been shared with the Executive Leadership Team for
feedback before it goes to the Board.
The Board joined members of the Operations Group and our agency FCB for a session on the
Public Information Strategy for the 2023 General Election which will inform our advertising and
other communications work for eligible New Zealanders in election year. This strategic work will
be informed by the Overarching Communications and Engagement Strategy. The session was a
chance to discuss the challenges and opportunities ahead and hear the Board’s input. The Public
Information Strategy will be finalised in December.
Page 4 of 6
Social media
Activity on our social media pages significantly reduced after the local elections. However, we’re
seeing a small but steady stream of negative comments directed at the Commission on Twitter,
Instagram and Facebook, because some overseas voters continue to receive their voting papers
after voting closed. Our responses let people know the role of the Commission in local elections
and direct them to their local council to share their feedback.
The Commission’s posts on Facebook and Instagram celebrating the historic milestone of 50% of
Parliament’s seats being occupied by women and suffrage day received positive engagement.
Media
Participation in local elections has been a primary focus of the media in the past month. Online
voting and having more in-person voting have been suggested by some academics and local body
politicians as a way of increasing turnout. Handing over running of the elections to the Electoral
Commission has also been suggested as a way to increase promotion of voting and have a more
consistent approach across the elections. Having the Commission pick up the elections is a key
recommendation of the Future of Local Government panel’s draft report released, and widely
reported, on 28 October.
While the role of the Commission has been clarified by the coverage, there has still been some
confusion over who actually runs the elections, with many media enquiries and comments on
social media seeking information on the local election throughout October.
The other major electoral story for the media this month was the resignation of Gaurav Sharma
from Parliament, which has triggered a by-election in Hamilton West. Media enquiries have
focussed on the dates and cost for the by-election. We anticipate high media interest in the by-
election which, in a bellwether seat, will be seen as an indicator of support for the Government
and Opposition in the lead-up to election year.
A selection of stories is attached in Appendix A.
Community Engagement Evaluation Framework
The community engagement teams have tested our monitoring framework for gaining feedback in
the field during our community engagement activities. The feedback will help to further refine the
framework and inform the implementation approach.
Issues under management
•
Nil
Risks
•
Nil
People management
TOIL or excess
•
Some staff in ECE have higher than desirable leave balances but they
annual leave
are being actively managed and leave plans are in place.
Page 5 of 6
Staff engagement
•
Other news
• DCE and CEO visit to Napier on 17 November will include our Rotorua, Hamilton, Gisborne
and Napier CE staff – an invitation has been extended to the Voting RM.
• Community engagement is continuing nationally with school visits, ongoing network
meetings and a focus on planning for summer events and associated activity.
• Communications and Education successfully recruited one new permanent position during
the month. Grace McIntryre accepted our offer for the position of Senior Advisor Digital.
Hannah commences on the 7 November.
• Communications and Education has interviewed two candidates for the new Senior
Advisor, Communications and Education (Accessibility) role.
• Recruitment has also commenced for the new permanent role of Senior Advisor,
Communications and Engagement to support the delivery of the implementation plan for
the overarching communications and engagement strategy.
• Recruitment for 3 Business Analysts, for MEO, Community Engagement and GE2023.
• Recruitment for a Customer Services Manager (aka centralised Enquiries Manager) is
planned.
Page 6 of 6
As required by the Election Access Fund Act, on 6 October a Gazette notice was published giving
public notice of the eligibility criteria for payments from the fund.
Agreements were signed with the independent panel members who will assess applications to the
fund. The panel members are Jade Farrar, Dianne Glenn, Huhana Hickey and Robbie
Watene. Their first meeting for training purposes is on 2 November.
Minister Allan was provided an update on 20 October to advise of final preparations for fund
opening, including publishing eligibility rules, recruiting an independent panel, and
communications planning.
International Liaison:
Our advisor has returned from Tokelau. The rules and manuals have been drafted and are being
submitted to the general Fono. We hope to complete this assignment within the next month.
The preparations for the Commonwealth Elections Pacific Region network conference are well
underway for 7-11 November. We will be having a mihi whakatau, with the welcome dinner led by
Hone Matthews, and we will be hosting the farewell dinner on the final night. We will have a
member of the Operations group attending the workshop.
International Electoral Assistance Programmes (MFAT funded):
We continue progressing with MFAT:
•
The new Pacific Regional programme in partnership with UNDP, is still underway. The launch
date for this have been pushed to February. This will allow us to support countries who do
not have a bi-lateral programme with us.
Fiji
To date the writ has not been issued and we await the date along with the rest of Fiji. The Manager
International has been in country providing support to the Deputy Supervisor of Elections based on
her having previously held the role.
All the Technical Advisors (TA) are on standby and will deploy once the date is announced.
Papua New Guinea
PNGEC are now in review mode and one of our TA will attend the Training and Awareness workshop
from 8-11 November in PNG followed by another TA attending the National Review to be held 21-
25 November.
This will help us to shape our activity plan for support for next year.
Tonga
The Manager International and a TA travelled to Tonga for the first time since 2019 and had a very
successful week with the Electoral Commission in Tonga. They were able to agree on a high-level
strategic support plan which will now be worked into an annual activity plan and work programme.
Other progress
Page 2 of 3
The International team has now filled the vacancies it has been carrying for many months:
administration support officer Niki Hunter and programme manager Karen Beggs both started this
month.
People management
TOIL or excess
•
No change. The two staff with TOIL balances are planning to use
annual leave
these over Christmas.
Staff engagement
•
No change
Page 3 of 3
