Pure Business Project

Project Overview - Understanding the Issues

Pure Business Project

The Pure Business Project is a research project administered by the Department of Labour and funded from a Cross Departmental Research Pool grant from the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology.

Overall Goal

To enhance the economic and social productivity of New Zealand Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

Objectives

• Identify the nature of the problem that regulation poses for SMEs and regulating agencies.
• Promote and support an understanding of regulation as a social activity.
• Support regulatory agencies and SMEs to develop mutually beneficial solutions to regulatory concerns.
• Actively disseminate and support improvements in the way that regulation is developed and utilised by SMEs and regulatory agencies.

Research Phases

Phase One - Understanding Issues (June 2003 - June 2004)
Provide a clear indication of exactly where regulatory compliance problems lie and highlight areas where solutions are most needed. It sought to uncover good practice in SMEs and government agencies that could be used to overcome these problems.

Phase Two - Developing Solutions (July 2004 - December 2005)
Developing specific solutions to improve regulatory development and compliance requirements.

Phase Three - Implementing Solutions (January 2006)
Provide practical support for changing regulatory practice, so that SMEs and Government both benefit from regulatory activities. Share more widely the regulatory solutions / tools developed in Phase Two.

Outcomes / Deliverables

The Project involves the exploration of regulatory solutions that take account of business needs and practices. It reaches across regulatory agency boundaries. It seeks to develop new solutions and change regulatory agencies' organisational behaviours

New solutions will arise from the dynamic and interactive (business/agency) nature of the project and participatory research method used, rather than by working towards pre-determined deliverables.

Benefits to SMEs

• Less time and money spent by SMEs in compliance activities and by government agencies in getting SMEs to comply.
• Less frustration experienced by SMEs and their representatives, and by staff of government agencies.
• Fewer opportunity costs (as a result of time taken on regulatory activities).
• Enterprises getting access to business information that is directly useful to them.
• Increased and sustained compliance.
• To provide a permanent solution, transformation at the level of the activity of regulatory compliance (as understood through the relationship of government and business) is required.

The PBP seeks to operate at the level of transformation of activity. This means:

• looking beyond a simple examination of streamlining existing procedures; and instead
• exploring the possibility of transforming the ways in which government departments as a whole and businesses think about the regulatory relationship when they are designing the procedures by which 'compliance' is managed.