The new director of the National Insurance Board (NIB) has her "hands full", but will focus on crafting policy guidelines for the social security agency, Minister of Labor and National Insurance Shane Gibson said yesterday.

The government selected Rowena Bethel as NIB's new director in June, nearly six weeks after former director Algernon Cargill was fired.

Gibson said while NIB has been productive over the years the agency needs clear cut rules to govern its work.

"She is the type of person that would bring focus, who would introduce more written policies," Gibson said. "I think one of the big problems at NIB now is that they don't have a lot of specific written policy guidelines as to how they conduct not only the operations of the core functions of NIB but on the construction side as well, the development side.

"When NIB first started out it was not anticipated that it would be doing all these developments, construction on behalf of the government. Now with the investment arm of NIB that's taken off so much it's appropriate for us to have clear policy guidelines that speak specifically to all of the functions being carried on at NIB at this time."

Bethel's appointment came months after the government spent more than $800,000 on a forensic investigation into allegations against Cargill and former NIB Chairman Greg Moss.

In late June, Gibson revealed that the government commissioned another audit into NIB but would not reveal details on that probe.

Yesterday he refused to answer questions about how much this new audit will cost the government or when it will be completed.

Gibson said he did not want to release information in "bits and pieces" to confuse the public.

"The idea is to wait until we have a comprehensive position and release the information to the public," Gibson said.

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