Ministry of Social Development

Topic : Heartland Services

Goals

Co-ordinated State Agencies
Accessible State Services
Trusted State Services

Summary

For New Zealanders living in provincial and rural New Zealand accessing government services often involves long drives or costly toll calls.

Heartland Services is a cross-sectoral interagency collaboration initiative about improving access to government services. It is also about providing more support to local community groups through access to facilities and resources available within the service centres. In some locations government and community organisations are co-located under one roof.

Heartlands gives people the opportunity to access services face-to-face in a familiar local environment.

These ‘one-stop-shops’ feature services and information from a range of government organisations – forms, guidelines, email and phone facilities and access to government websites. They are run by co-ordinators who assist people to make appointments and direct them to services that meet their needs. This one-stop-shop concept has been expanded to urban locations with centres opening up in Whangarei, Hornby and Aranui.

The workshop provides a look at the results of the initiative and key findings from it.