Wellington, March 29 NZPA - KPMG has been appointed to benchmark administrative and support services in nine state sector agencies.

The move was announced by the Treasury in a statement that did not detail the size of the contract. The Treasury is among the agencies being benchmarked.

KPMG will look at finance, information technology management, human resource management, procurement, travel and transport, real estate, facilities management, corporate communications, and planning and strategy services.

The benchmarking is part of the Better Administrative and Support Services (Bass) programme, which aims to establish how to achieve leading practice for administrative and support services by using an all-of-government perspective.

KPMG will establish baseline performance and cost information, identify opportunities for improvement, highlight options for increasing transparency, and recommend improvement targets.

The nine agencies to be benchmarked are: the Treasury, NZ Transport Agency, Inland Revenue Department, Ministry of Social Development, Housing NZ, Department of Internal Affairs, Ministry for Economic Development, Defence Force, and the Police.