Pine Tree
17 February 2017
Dear Sir/Madam
Thank you for your email of 24 February 2017, requesting the following information under the
Official Information Act 1982:
“Australian Research Council/ICT team about RMS - What was the purpose of
this trip?
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What was the purpose of this trip
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Why was its necessary for 3 people to travel - Manager Grants and
Investments, Sector Manager, Senior Project Manager
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What were the dates of travel
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Can you provide itemised receipts for all expenses Can you provide date and
times for all meetings
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Can you provide an agenda and minutes for all meetings
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How did these meeting further MBIE strategic objectives.
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What information was obtained that could not be source from the ARC
website and the RMS Manual Where these people employees, consultants or
contractors. If consultants or contractors what was the hourly rate paid and
the total payment for this trip (excluding travel, Accommodation and other
costs).
The purpose of the trip was to look at an Investment Management System equivalent application
used to manage science research funding and to learn the success factors in their system
improvement project. At the time we were reviewing whether to retain or replace our existing IMS
system and the trip helped with our planning.
Three people travelled:
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Cherie Marshall, Manager Grants and Investments,
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Danielle Hannan, Sector Manager
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Gabrielle Butler, Project Manager
The dates of travel were the 14 March 2016 – 16 March 2016.
MBIE requires all officials travelling on Ministry business to file expense reconciliations. The total
expenditure for the trip, including economy flights for all the officials was $5,674.39 (NZD)
DOIA 1617-1001 Pine Tree
The agenda was a full day meeting where we met separately with ARC staff to deep dive down into
areas of interest to us in planning our system improvement project. We met with the CIO,
Application Operations Manager, Data Architects, Developers, Project Manager and three fund
leaders to understand the business process they were developing for. Please refer to the ARC trip
report for a full report of this trip.
The objectives of this trip were to foster relationships between the two organisations and research
all aspects of the system rewrite – project management and business and system operations and
we were also particularly interested in some new algorithms they had developed to find and align
assessors with funding applications.
One traveller was a contractor. The hourly rate of contract is $129.50 Exclusive of GST.
You have the right to seek an investigation and review of the release of this information by the
Ombudsman, whose address for contact purposes is:
The Ombudsman
Office of the Ombudsman
PO Box 10-152
WELLINGTON 6143
Yours sincerely
Cherie Marshall,
Manager, Investment Operations (Previously Grants and Investment)
DOIA 1617-1001 Pine Tree
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