Future development of the Plan

The Government has indicated that this Plan will be the first of many. Options for development of the next Plan are now under consideration.

This initial Plan describes the Government's current investment plans and policy programmes. It also surveys each sector and draws some conclusions about the state of each. It looks forward to a greater or lesser extent depending on the state of forecasting and planning that currently exists in each sector. Few sectors currently have forecasts extending to ten years and none go beyond that period.

Work programme

There are a number of enhancements and extensions to the Plan that may be possible. These include extending the scope and developing projections of infrastructure needs with a horizon of 20-years or more.

The first stage is to agree the scope, after considering whether to include any additional sectors. Submitters have suggested including a number of additional sectors such as tertiary education, science infrastructure and public housing.

The next stage is to look at future demand scenarios and other forecasts held by the agencies responsible for each sector. This work, even performed at high level, aims to:

• provide greater clarity as to when capacity problems might emerge and the potential costs of responding to them within current policy settings and service levels
• link to the Long Term Fiscal Outlook and constraints on expenditure
• create a common understanding of likely long-term infrastructure issues that will need to be addressed
• be used to coordinate and/or align long-term plans and investment intentions by a wider range of infrastructure owners and responsible agencies
• assess the capability of institutional arrangements to address the identified gaps, and
• drive policy work around key policy issues such as demand management.

Following the demand analysis we will identify gaps and the institutions best placed to fill these. Generic infrastructure or economic work is likely to be best handled by the Infrastructure Unit, while sector-specific analysis is likely to be best handled by the responsible sector agency. Depending on the outcome, further work will then be needed to identify the policy directions and other implications that arise.

Where investment gaps are identified we will need to find ways to make available dollars go further, by reducing low value projects or increasing efficiency, or tapping new funding sources. Greater private sector participation in the provision of public services may form part of this mix.

A number of other work-streams may also contribute to the next Plan. For example, depending on the timing, there may be results that can be incorporated from the Land and Water Forum; development of the next tier of roads of national significance; and the second phase of the Resource Management work. We will also be working on several related initiatives such as capital asset management and decision support tools.

Finally, there will be a need to consider whether the output of this work is best presented in a revised infrastructure plan, a new annex to the existing Plan, or some other format such as working papers.