He anga pīroiroi rironga o te tari We manage a significant departmental assets portfolio
Our client services are supported by many assets that assist us and our shared service partners to deliver services like visiting clients, communicating, having face-to-face discussions, and meeting together online.
We manage close to $325 million in departmental capital assets (2019/20: $333 million), made up of $137 million (2020: $158 million) of property, plant and equipment and $174 million (2020: $188 million) of intangible assets. This year we received a capital injection of $84 million, which included some funding to improve the resilience of critical systems. We spent just over $91 million (2020: $90 million) on capital expenditure to maintain and upgrade our asset base.
Maintaining the suitability and availability of assets through strong asset management practice and performance monitoring is essential to optimising the value of our significant asset portfolio. This includes asset management planning at strategic and operational levels and a structured approach to assessing the condition and performance of our assets with a strong base of reliable asset information.
Our asset performance framework groups monitoring and reporting into Property and Technology asset portfolios. This breakdown, as further described below, reflects the different management approaches required to manage and monitor our significant assets.
Asset performance measures and standards are approved at executive level at the start of each financial year. Our asset performance results and standards are set out in Appendix 4.
Our asset portfolios
Property
These assets provide more than 159,000m² of commercial office space (2019/20: 225,000m²), the majority of which is located in leased rather than owned premises, to house MSD staff . These property assets are key in allowing us to engage face to face with clients and provide the back-office support necessary for a large government agency. The assets within the leased space are primarily fitouts, furniture and security assets. We relocated three client-facing offices into new improved premises this year.
We have introduced flexible workspaces in our National Office campus to better reflect the way our people work and to make better use of our space.
We are also working on improving long-term property investment planning, including options to leverage tenure at strategic sites.
We are actively working with the Government Property Group to optimise government office accommodation throughout New Zealand.
Technology
We monitor asset performance within two broad categories: software and computer equipment. These play a critical role in ensuring that we can provide services in a timely, reliable and efficient way and in accordance with current government policy and legislation. The services provided through these assets are significant, with over 380 different technology services across a range of applications.
Most of our core applications are now at least 15 years old, with the core payments engine (SWIFTT) 30 years old. The age of these systems means it is increasingly difficult to maintain and support these applications or to deliver policy changes in a timely manner. Some of our software assets are no longer fully supported by the supplier and need to be enhanced or replaced.