12 February 2012

Government Statistician To Join Reserve Bank Of New Zealand

The State Services Commissioner, Iain Rennie, today congratulated Government Statistician and Statistics New Zealand Chief Executive Geoff Bascand on his appointment as Deputy Governor and Head of Operations at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand.

Mr Bascand has served as Government Statistician for almost six years and has been with Statistics New Zealand since 2004.

During this period, Mr Rennie acknowledged Geoff Bascand’s strong and sustained leadership of Statistics New Zealand (Statistics NZ) and of the Official Statistics System where Mr Bascand led the production of key statistics by government departments and specified Crown entities.

“Of particular note is Geoff’s contribution to Statistics NZ’s development as a highly capable statistical agency, including its significant transformation programme – Statistics 2020 Te Kāpehu Whetū. This 10-year ‘blueprint’ will ensure that New Zealand has the statistical information that it needs to grow and prosper. The recent Performance Improvement Framework (PIF) review[1] of Statistics NZ was also favourable. Geoff leaves a government agency well-placed to meet future challenges, “Mr Rennie said.

On appointing Mr Bascand, Reserve Bank of New Zealand Governor, Graeme Wheeler said that he had strengthened the official statistics system, improved organisational performance, enhanced relations and governance mechanisms, and led significant cultural change and leadership development.

Mr Bascand, who has also served as a senior manager at the Department of Labour, the Treasury and as an economist at the International Monetary Fund, begins his new role at the Reserve Bank on May 27 this year.

The State Services Commission will now begin the recruitment of a new Statistics New Zealand Chief Executive.

[1] The Performance Improvement Framework is a joint central agency initiative to help senior leaders continuously improve the performance of the agencies they lead.
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BIOGRAPHY OF GEOFF BASCAND

Geoff Bascand became Government Statistician and Chief Executive of Statistics New Zealand on 22 May 2007.

Geoff was previously the Deputy Government Statistician responsible for Macro-economic, Environment, Regional and Geography Statistics.
Geoff is a career public servant with senior management experience at three departments.

He started his career in 1981 at the Treasury as an economic analyst and later became Director of Forecasting. From 1998 until 2004, Geoff was the General Manager of the Labour Market Policy Group at the Department of Labour.
As well as holding senior policy and management positions at the Treasury and the Department of Labour, Geoff has been a Research Fellow at the Centre of Policy Studies at Monash University in Australia, and from 1996 until 1997 he was a staff economist at the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC.
Geoff has a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree in geography from the University of Otago and a Master of Economics from the Australian National University.
In 2005, Geoff was awarded a Leadership Development Centre Fellowship.

ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On Failures Of Care For Those With Mental Disabilities

Hard to imagine a more disturbing insight into the treatment of the vulnerable than the Health Ministry report on Te Roopu Taurima o Manukau. The Ministry has found that the country’s only kaupapa Maori intellectual disability residential care provider has been “seriously dysfunctional.”

The ministry says the business has failed to recruit and retain quality staff – and says the kaimahi (caregivers) that have been employed are seriously unsuitable for the job, lacking basic knowledge. But Te Roopu Taurima o Manukau doesn’t get all the blame. The report says there’s a significant gap under disability laws to ensure there’s oversight by qualified clinical professionals. More>>