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New Zealand has been a beacon for government reforms for almost three decades. While the New Public Management Reforms of the late 1980s made agencies more efficient and responsive, they also created a new problem; agencies struggled to organize effectively around problems that crossed agency boundaries. New Zealand undertook a new round of reform in 2012 to address ten important and persistent crosscutting problems.

This report focuses on interagency coordination and thus differs from many earlier IBM Center reports that have examined the use of collaboration.  Dr. Strimling Yodsampa notes that, when agencies collaborate, they work side by side toward a shared goal. When they coordinate, they still maintain their organizational autonomy and independence of action, but they deliberately align resources, capabilities, strategies, and implementation in support of shared goals.

Batting average isn’t the best way to determine the effectiveness of a hitter. The Oakland Athletics learned that while doing statistical analyses of players and trying to build a winning team during their 2002 season. “They took everything that happened on the baseball field and sliced it and diced it to its most elemental parts,” Michael Lewis, author of the book, “Moneyball,” said in a radio interview.  The A’s surprised just about everyone with their new-found success on the field, besting teams that had millions more to spend on recruiting top players.

The Partnership Fund for Program Integrity Innovation