Ross Boyd

Ross Boyd (BA Hons, NZTC, MEdAdmin) is a Principal Policy Analyst in New Zealand’s State Services Commission. Over the last six years Boyd has applied his previous public policy experience in Education, Treasury, and the Prime Minister’s department to develop a public management initiative that has successfully joined effort in a fragmented system. Boyd takes a pragmatic approach: bringing together principles from the public
management literature, applying them to the situation in New Zealand, and designing new ways of operating.

As a member of New Zealand’s public sector reform team from 2011 to date, Boyd used design thinking to develop and communicate a more joined and effective future state sector system; used rapid prototyping to turn this into a practical operational model; secured government support for the approach; implemented the new way of operating; reported on progress; and continuously developed and adjusted the process based on evidence
of what worked. More recently he has teamed up with a colleague, Dr Rodney Scott, to evaluate the initiative and compare and contrast it with similar public management approaches internationally. What they have learned from their research, together with the application of New Zealand’s “social investment” approach, is being incorporated into a refresh of the programme in 2017.

In earlier work that has attracted international interest, Boyd led teams to develop and implement New Zealand’s Performance Improvement Framework (2009-2011) and to develop and implement New Zealand’s Early Childhood Education Strategy (2000–2004)