Unconfirmed reports that the Public Service Commission (PSC) may be considering winding up some smaller Ministries have produced predictable reactions.

Not surprisingly, the Public Service Association has lambasted the suggestions as “too disruptive”. It says the possible abolition of the Ministries of Women's Affairs, Pacific Peoples, Disabled People and Ethnic Communities would leave those groups disempowered and unrepresented in government policymaking. But then the PSA has never been known for looking beyond the trade union interests of public servants.

However, there is a deeper issue behind any changes the PSC may be considering, far beyond such an easy, knee jerk reaction. If the PSC is looking at the future of those small, boutique Ministries and potentially the Māori Development Agency, Te Puni Kokiri, as well, the real question is what alternative structural arrangements will be put in place to replace them and meet the needs of the population sectors they presently serve. After all, the relevance and purpose of the functions they carry out is far more important than the form by which they do so.

The main reason why these small Ministries and agencies have developed separately has been to give specific identity to the causes they represent. The presumption has been that these separate entities have both given a clear sense of worth and distinctiveness to those sectors and provide a general official rallying point for their specific causes. There is a legitimate purpose in that.

It appears that what the PSC may be looking at is whether that form of identity governance still best serves the interests of those sectors. Implicit in that determination will be a judgement of the role and purpose of those small Ministries. Do they exist simply to ensure that those sectors “have a voice” in government decision-making (in other words, a representative function), or are they there to perform a more activist advocacy function, and if so, how effectively do they currently perform that role?

A likely conclusion would be that current outcomes are variable. Te Puni Kokiri and Women’s Affairs probably are more influential than the Ministries for Pacific Peoples, Disabled People and Ethnic Communities. If that is the case, then is there a better way for organisationally ensuring more even-handed representation and advocacy of the interest of all those sectors within the structure of government?

What will be imperative in any review or winding-up of small Ministries by the PSC will be ensuring that the various functions they currently undertake are clearly assigned within any new structures. Abolishing small Ministries cannot mean that the roles they have performed over the years are similarly abolished or downgraded. The focus needs to be on the relevance of form, not function.

At the same time, consideration ought to be given to a wider review of the organisation and number of government departments, and the consequent impact of those on the nature and number of Ministerial portfolios. Too often in recent years Ministerial portfolios have been created to provide roles for government support partners. The upshot has been a subsequent pressure to create some form of bureaucratic entity to give meaning (and mana for the Minister) to these new portfolios. The establishment of the Ministry of Regulation (which sounds like something out of Orwell’s 1984, or a Monty Python skit) following the appointment of ACT’s leader as Minister for Regulation is the most obvious, but by no means sole, recent example.

That raises the question of whether government departments and agencies should be established or abolished to suit the dynamic of coalition formation of the government of the day, or whether there should be a firmer structural base, built around ensuring the best mechanism for the delivery of the ongoing functions of government. At the start of his tenure, the current Public Service commissioner hinted at moving towards the latter approach, and this may be behind the current speculation about the fate of small Ministries.

While the discussion around the future of small Ministries is an important one, it is not just a specific end. So long as there is sufficient protection elsewhere in the government machine for the functions they currently perform, the overall impact of any change in this direction is likely to be minor, aside from its cosmetic impact.

When the dust settles from any changes that may emerge from the work the PSC declines to confirm or deny is underway, the wider question of whether the public service is currently best organised for purpose will remain. With public sector job numbers having grown over a third during the term of the Labour-led government and thousands of jobs now being cut under the current government, the abrupt, ad hoc approach of the last decade to the development of the public service is far from desirable.

A more functional, output-centred approach to the future structure and organisation of the public service is overdue. It is a matter the PSA might even be persuaded to engage constructively upon.