A Crown entity (from the Commonwealth term Crown) is an organisation that forms part of New Zealand's state sector established under the Crown Entities Act 2004, a unique umbrella governance and accountability statute. The Crown Entities Act is based on the corporate model where the governance of the organisation is split from the management of the organisation.
Crown entities come under the following subtypes:
Crown entities can be contrasted with other New Zealand public sector organisational forms: departments of state, State-owned enterprises, offices of Parliament and sui generis organisations like the Reserve Bank.
Under the Crown Entities Act, Ministers are required to "oversee and manage" the Crown's interests in the Crown entities within their portfolio (sections 27 and 88). The board of the entity has the key role in ensuring the entity is achieving results within budget. This is done by a monitoring department on behalf of the Minister unless other arrangements for monitoring are made. Monitoring departments make explicit agreements with their Minister, setting out what monitoring they will undertake and how they will do it. Crown entity boards should also facilitate clear and transparent monitoring, for example, by providing the Minister and monitoring department with good information on which to make judgements about performance.
This table is based on one from the State Services Commission.
Abbreviations used ACE = autonomous Crown entity CCMAU = Crown Company Monitoring Advisory Unit CEC = Crown entity company CRIs = Crown research institutes (all CECs) ICE = independent Crown entity TPK = Te Puni Kokiri (Ministry of Maori Development) MoRST = Ministry of Research, Science and Technology TEIs = tertiary education institutions School BoTs = school boards of trustees