MAFBNZ High Priority Organisms (HPO) Project

Biosecurity is a complex business. The risk landscape involves a dynamic set of factors, from the organisms themselves, to agricultural production and trade, our indigenous ecosystems, and our socio-cultural value systems. Advances in science and technology provide increasing opportunity for interventions to reduce risk. But how do we decide which threats to manage, and when, where and how to intervene?

To assist with making these decisions and communicating our priorities internally and externally, MAF Biosecurity New Zealand (MAFBNZ) has started developing an Organism Prioritisation Framework. The three components of the framework are a policy, a dataset of standardised organism information (supporting a number of lists), and an internal business system to manage the policy and dataset.

The vision for the HPO project is outlined in a short presentation.

Biosecurity stakeholders will have the opportunity to input into the criteria for prioritisation through focus groups, and nominate organisms for consideration. There will also be opportunity to comment on the policy during its development when a draft is released for consultation in 2009.

Why prioritise organisms?

The biosecurity system protects New Zealand’s economic, environmental, human health and socio-cultural values. These values are threatened by a very large number of organisms that affect animal health, plant health, and terrestrial, freshwater and marine environments.

The MAFBNZ unwanted organism register currently lists over 15,000 organisms in twelve categories. These organisms would impact on New Zealand’s values in different ways and with differing severity. Similarly, the likelihood of their entry and establishment varies, and is related to how well our interventions are delivering effective risk management at the border and in post-border settings.

Very often, commercial enterprises and members of the public are inconvenienced or incur compliance costs from biosecurity risk management interventions designed to protect New Zealand. The New Zealand government, taxpayers and businesses fund these interventions. For these reasons, MAFBNZ has a duty to ensure we are transparently using our resources and that they are targeted at interventions that deliver the best value risk management.

A facilitator (John Hellstrom) helped us during the initiation phase of this project. Workshops were run with the project team to clarify the problem to be addressed, the purpose of the new systems and tools, and the approach to their development for this project. The report from these workshops is available here:

How to prioritise organisms?

Systems for structured risk analysis and decision-making have been developed by MAFBNZ over many years, and applied across the biosecurity intervention framework. These will continue to provide the basis for our application of risk management. The Organism Prioritisation Framework will contribute to improved risk management by providing participants in the biosecurity system with a common set of standardised information for risk organisms, to support their risk analysis and decision-making. This information will cover the key criteria that contribute to:

  • the impact of organisms if they were to arrive here
  • the likelihood of arrival and establishment, and
  • current measures applied to manage the risk, and their estimated effect.

The way we intend to organise and utilise the standardised datasets for organisms is outlined in a conceptual framework:

The criteria will be deliberately positioned on the continuum between objectivity and subjectivity. The framework will not be a reference database of taxonomical, biological, ecological and epidemiological information, with algorithms that combine variables to provide hard answers. Decision makers in MAFBNZ will be called upon to make judgments that take into account context, just as they always have. Where we want to make a difference is by ensuring decision-makers have access to a consistent set of fit-for-purpose information.

Project approach

The first step is to gather information from across MAFBNZ and external organisations that will inform our work. Using this, we will develop a framework for categorising biosecurity risk organisms, with associated criteria (a high-level conceptual framework is provided as figure 1). At this point, we intend to use internal and external focus groups to critique and improve our ideas. Once the categorisation framework is finalised, we will begin the policy drafting process and the collation of data for specific organisms. We intend to collate data for about 500 organisms, those believed to present the highest risk to New Zealand. Stakeholders in New Zealand will assist us identify this starting set. Experts will be used to check the data we collate, and the lists that the categorisation framework develops. The development of the business system will involve alignment of decision-rights and processes with the MAFBNZ business model, and the formulation of clear expectations for how the information is maintained and used.

A Business Case and Project Management Plan has been developed and provides more detailed information on the scope of the project and how MAFBNZ is approaching the work:

Five specific issues relating to the strategic scope of the project and the project approach were developed into an options paper. The Sponsor and Steering Committee agreed with the recommended options.

Links to other related work

There are a number of important strategic projects going on in MAFBNZ right now with a view to increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of the biosecurity intervention framework. Many involve some element of prioritisation. The High Priority Organisms project is one piece of the jigsaw puzzle informing this work.

Links to some of the other project work that the HPO project is interacting with follow:

Getting involved

Register your interest to directly receive updates and notification of consultation by sending an email to Deirdre.Haines@maf.govt.nz with “HPO Project” in the subject line and your contact details and who you represent in the body of the email.

Project Updates

We will post information of interest to stakeholders in this project here, including key deliverables, documents we are consulting on, and other information providing opportunities for stakeholders to get involved.

Matthew Stone
Project Manager, High Priority Organisms Project
MAFBNZ

Page last updated: 29 June 2009