In November 2014, Hon Annette King asked me to look into the performance of Health Benefits Limited (HBL), the decision to wind the entity down, what HBL had cost the health sector, and the benefits it had achieved.
After due consideration, I decided to look into the costs and benefits of HBL’s work in the health sector and, where possible, identify lessons that might benefit HBL’s successor and other shared services programmes. This work also looked at:
- how HBL managed relationships with health sector entities;
- the approach and processes that HBL used in business cases; and
- the governance and management arrangements for delivering HBL’s programmes.
Key Results
The lessons that could help other public entities better manage new programmes are:
- Ensure that programme governance and management are effective.
- Establish a clear and efficient decision-making process, particularly when delivering multi-entity programmes.
- Governance boards need good-quality information before making significant decisions and must be confident that they have enough information before making a decision to proceed with a programme.
- Integrate design and planning. FPSC work streams managed their plans independently, while co-ordinating with other work streams.
- Adhere strictly to project control standards.
- Do not underestimate the scale of change management effort required to effect significant sector-wide initiatives such as the programmes led by HBL.
- Allow enough time and emphasis for programme recruitment.
- Have trained staff in place and ready when starting a change programme.
- Ensure that communication between parties is open and two way.
- Ensure that sector solutions are scalable. Systems put into effect throughout a sector need to be able to be scaled up or down to meet the different needs of differently sized organisations.
- Consider fully all tools, including legislative powers, available to achieve successful results.