29 June 2020
John Luke
[FYI request #13009 email] Dear Mr Luke
Thank you for your email of 3 June 2020, requesting the following information under the
Official Information Act 1982:
I noted on your webpage
https://www.transport.govt.nz/about/crown-entities-and-statutory-bodies/current-
board-vacancies/
The current board vacancies seems all expired and the webpage is not activity up
to date. May I kindly request, your org chart for people in relation to this board
nomination service team. Also, I would like to know what is your internal protocol
for managing and releasing vacancy on this web page. Are there any dedicate
people mange this web page to ensure it's correctness?
The web page said "Last updated on: 13/03/2020" are there any more vacancy that
is not showing on this page since last update?
In response to your request, the Governance and Commercial team in the Ministry of
Transport (the Ministry) is responsible for monitoring and governance related functions
related to the transport Crown entities1 and statutory bodies. This includes advice on Board
appointments for the transport Crown entities and City Rail Link Limited.
The Governance and Commercial team is also responsible for monitoring those agency’s
financial and non-financial performance, leading advice on selected commercial matters,
administering the Government’s contract with the Meteorological Services of New Zealand
(MetService), and administering the Government’s joint venture appropriations with a
number of regional airports.
Within the Governance and Commercial team, there is one senior advisor who is
responsible for leading the board appointments function, one graduate advisor who is
designated to provide support to this function, and other team members provide support
where necessary. There are nine full time positions in this team overall (one manager, two
principal advisers, four senior advisers, one adviser and one graduate adviser).
The Governance and Commercial team reports to the Deputy Chief Executive, System
Performance and Governance. This role then reports to the Ministry’s Chief Executive.
1 The transport Crown entities are: Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency, Civil Aviation Authority,
Maritime New Zealand and the Transport Accident Investigation Commission.
In terms of managing information about board vacancies for release on the Ministry’s
website, I can confirm that there are currently no formal procedures in place, however,
guidelines are currently being developed. It is expected that information on the website is
up-to-date and we do endeavour to make sure this is the case. There is one individual
within the Ministry who works with business groups on website content management.
In the instance you refer to, website links were not removed to advertisements for
vacancies on the Civil Aviation Authority and Independent Expert Panel on Drug Driving
following the completion of those advertisement periods. The links on the Ministry’s website
connect through to the primary advertisement for the role, which is on the Treasury’s Board
Appointments Database (this database utilised by a number of Government agencies to
advertise and maintain board vacancies). The advertisements on Treasury’s website were
removed at the time the vacancies closed and an individual would not have been able to
access that vacancy through clicking on the out of date information on the Ministry’s
website.
The out-of-date advertisements have since been removed from the Ministry’s website. The
Ministry has also advertised no further vacancies for ministerial appointed positions since
the page was last updated. We thank you for notifying us that this information was out-of-
date.
This response completes your request for information. Please note, you have the right to
request a review of the Ministry’s response from the Office of the Ombudsman. Details on
how to do this are available at:
https://www.ombudsman.parliament.nz/. Yours sincerely
Robert Anderson
Acting Manager, Governance and Commercial
2