A little bit of lots of things with Clare Francis, Principal Advisor Standards New Zealand

Clare Francis, Principal Advisor

Clare joined Standards New Zealand in 2023, bringing skills and experiences gained from working across government, traveling and living abroad, and raising three small people. ‘With much of Standards New Zealand focused on service delivery and our clients that commission our services and customers that buy our standards, my role is more focused on our other types of customers, including our Minister and Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) leadership, who want to make sure we meet, and can continue to meet, all our legal, policy and business obligations and objectives.’

Informing Ministers

‘Standards cut across many sectors and so the standards we manage touch on the portfolios of many government ministers and industries, from building and construction to consumer protection, trade and market exports to name just a few.

‘However, the Standards and Accreditation Act 2015 under which we operate comes under the remit of the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. Having a national standards body and standards touching so many aspects of our daily lives is a sign of a healthy and developed society, and so our Minister needs to be across our work to advocate and champion the benefits standards bring.

‘To keep our Minister informed I work on a range of specific ministerial briefings and help put together our annual report which paints a clear picture of our achievements, the challenges and opportunities – you can read copies of our recent reports on our website.’

Standards New Zealand annual reports(external link)

‘We are working on the 2023/24 financial year’s annual report, but I can give you some highlights. We published 221 new standards onto our web-shop in the last 12 months, our standards were accessed a massive 370,000 times and we welcomed 134 new diverse Kiwi subject matter experts onto standards development committees. It’s exciting when you look at the numbers and realise how much standards make an impact on people’s lives and jobs every single day. It turns the policy work behind the scenes into real outcomes where people can trade, go home safely, and use everyday products and services with confidence.’

Shaping practice with policy

‘Currently I am heavily involved in supporting policy colleagues across MBIE on a couple of projects relating to the standards and conformance system. One is to look at the sustainability of our funding model as a fully ‘user pays’ third-party funded business unit within MBIE. We recover our business costs to operate through both the commissioning of standards development work and the sale of published standards.'

Laying the path for international adoptions

‘Another area of focus for me is looking at how we can increase the use and adoption of international standards in New Zealand. We work very closely with Standards Australia who often lead on joint adoptions of international standards.  

‘Standards New Zealand already encourages industries to look for ‘international first’ and 87% of the standards we published last year were international adoptions, but there is significant opportunity to do more, and for adoptions to be targeted in areas where international alignment will have the most benefit to New Zealand. Our work will help raise awareness of the innovation, efficiencies, interoperability and trade facilitation and market access benefits that using international standards can offer.’

Internal competence

‘Behind the well-oiled machine that is Standards NZ are plans, policies and processes, and organisational development initiatives many of which I have a role in developing and keeping up-to-date and relevant. For example, I have just updated our privacy statement and privacy impact assessment on the collection of personal information. One impact of the updates is that we can now collect information about the gender, age and ethnicity of subject matter experts volunteering to work on standards committees. This information will help us ensure that standards committees have balanced representation of stakeholder interests and the appropriate diversity of skills, knowledge, and experience relevant to the standard being developed.

‘So, while a lot of my work happens in the background it helps provide transparency and run efficient, quality assured and legislatively compliant processes so you can have confidence your national standards body is robust, responsive and will continue to provide value for many years to come.’