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One of the key themes the evaluation identified was the urgent need for governance training in Māori organisations. While governance training was high on the agenda for most organisations, finding relevant training or development opportunities specifically tailored to organisations such as marae or land trusts was often difficult. Formalising a training programme with the attainment of a qualification for trustees of Māori organisations could be an area of future work for Te Puni Kōkiri. This could be undertaken with the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and other governance training providers such as New Zealand Trade and Enterprise and the Institute of Directors in New Zealand.
The Hui Taumata Action Taskforce10 recommended the establishment of a Māori Leadership in Governance Development Centre for the delivery of a broad-based leadership and governance education programme targeted at a wide range of Māori organisations. This suggestion may provide a platform for the development and delivery of the requisite training programmes.
Survey results indicated that organisations wanted more governance resources to assist their development, including governance toolkits and templates.
Te Puni Kōkiri has developed some resources that could assist SMG organisations in their governance and management functions. The Boardwalk Series on governance, the governance website11 and the recently published Governance guide,12 a self-help guide for people involved in the governance and management of Māori organisations, are freely available to organisations.
Te Puni Kōkiri should ensure all organisations are aware of, and able to access, these resources as well as resources available from other agencies.
A vast body of knowledge on Māori governance exists within the SMG programme and particularly with the assessors. No formal process has been undertaken to extract and utilise this information to inform policy development or to understand the development needs of Māori governance. Although this evaluation goes some way towards identifying issues in Māori organisations, there still remains much information that could be analysed, particularly in exploring what defines Māori governance and whether there are unique characteristics, and how active Māori organisations are in using Western practices of governance.
One assessor suggested Te Puni Kōkiri may wish to consider promoting the guiding principles of the Policy Governance Model13 as a basis for further development of knowledge about Māori governance.
The ambiguity of the SMG programme outcomes made it difficult for the evaluation to measure whether these high level outcomes were achieved. For example, how does Te Puni Kōkiri define ‘strong Māori organisation’? Is it possible or desirable for Te Puni Kōkiri to attempt to determine if government funds administered by other agencies are targeted appropriately?
Te Puni Kōkiri should redefine the programme outcomes to ensure they are clear, measurable and meaningful and align with the Māori Potential outcomes. Te Puni Kōkiri should also consider further developing the outcomes model (outlined in section 1.4.2) and testing the relevance of the low order outcomes of the model, including, where possible, developing indicators and measures of success for these outcomes.
One of the early policy intentions for the SMG programme was for Te Puni Kōkiri to broker and facilitate access to resources from other agencies (instead of Te Puni Kōkiri funding both the assessment and remedial phases). To a large extent this only occurred on an ad hoc basis, at a localised level, and is dependent on the relationship Te Puni Kōkiri staff have with other agencies. The impetus for brokering agency collaboration for organisation development opportunities may have diminished somewhat now that the SMG programme is well established and organisations know that Te Puni Kōkiri can fund both phases. However, opportunities still exist for Te Puni Kōkiri to increase synergies with other agencies that offer provider development funding or have a vested interest in building the capability and capacity of Māori organisations.
10 Hui Taumata Action Taskforce and Victoria University (n.d.). 11 www.governance.tpk.govt.nz. 12 Te Puni Kōkiri (2007). 13 Carver (1997).
