The New Transport Department, the RTA and Outcomes Management

The RTA, which is world class when it comes to operations, design and construction, should be retained as a service organisation, on contract to deliver; on tap and not on top.

There should be a separate and independent road/transport safety body able to report direct to Parliament.

The tie between classification for planning and use and classification for funding needs to be split, with the Department rethinking how local government is funded to play its part in achieving improved accessibility and safety.

Other interests besides those concerned with road speed down the arterials need to be brought into the planning and design processes. For example, each multi function transport corridor should have one person responsible for both its urban design and its operation. 

The Roads Act needs to be reconsidered along with the Planning legislation.

Bottom Up Change

The Department of Transport needs to ensure fundamental organisational change if it is to survive and prosper. Making fundamental change to powerful guild organisations is not easy. There is only one way and that is from the bottom up. Unless you involve the staff they will defeat you.

The existing staff knows most about an organisation. They have the greatest interest in having a worthwhile job that has them going home at the end of the week having achieved something other than the protection of guild interests.

Ministers need to make it clear what they expect from the agencies under their control. The staff of the agencies should then be given a set time within which to design an organisation able to deliver those outcomes.

Inevitably, the foundations of the colonial model must be questioned. While it makes sense to have experts in agencies contracted by outcome and ministries to produce specific outputs, it does not make sense for the central ministries to consist of one or more group of specialists employed in separate divisions. 

The model of a post-colonial, outcome focused, state government was set out in detail in our team’s report to Bob Carr. It included an enlightening reworking of the state budget on an outcome rather than input/output basis. 

Our report lasted a nana-second, once it was presented to the over 40 heads of the guild agencies. Apart from being dismissed by those who would find themselves heading a service body, as one of the potential outcome DGs said to me, ‘Being responsible for pursuing such a complex outcome would be way too much responsibility.’

The new Transport Department is a good start, but we have seen many other attempts fail. Lets hope the necessary organisational changes are put in place from the bottom up and that it therefore survives longer than its predecessors.

The new Government should now go on and apply the outcomes model to the rest of the government. There must be a copy of our 1995 report somewhere in the files.