Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure Programmes

Welcome initiative to finally tackle public service value for money, but not sure putting someone in charge who failed in almost exactly the same role in the 80's is the right idea.

Make no mistake, its a huge task to change the culture of any large organisation and impose behavioural changes on people who are deeply embedded in their roles.

Even more important than layoffs is the implementation of an effective performance management system that sets clearly goals and discriminates between good and poor performers, with set consequences for those who fail to meet the standards.

And while they are doing it in the public service, something similar should be done in the Irish banks who are also a cosy resting place for a large number of people counting down to a lucrative pension.

The full report

its a .pdf file

Irrelevant whether this is required or not as this is standard government pass the buck onto another guango. Wasn't the public service reformed as part of benchmarking? :confused:

They will take years to come up with any recommendations. will "negotiate" with unions for another couple of years until finally politicians are unable to make decisions. I imagine there is a large storeroom in the Dail with similar reports already.

I remember hearing about some sort of secret society in the public service who were calling for reform inside the system. Whatever happened to them?

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Originally Posted by pete

I remember hearing about some sort of secret society in the public service who were calling for reform inside the system. Whatever happened to them?

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There were 5 disgruntled civil servants that apparently wrote to the OECD when they were doing the report. The media talked them up as "Top Managers" when I don't think any of them were above HEO (i.e. not management). There's no evidence they proposed anything concrete and it was just a tool to discredit the OECD report as it didn't serve the vested interests in INM.

The OECD report

Another .pdf file

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Originally Posted by OneRedArmy

Even more important than layoffs is the implementation of an effective performance management system that sets clearly goals and discriminates between good and poor performers, with set consequences for those who fail to meet the standards.

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If the focus is on lay offs, and it appears to be, then I don't see it being a success in VFM terms. The focus should be on better services for the money rather than necessarily just reducing costs.

I don't see the creation how the creation of procurement and IT quango's really helping the situation. Cost savings will probably be outweighed by admin costs.

I reckon the Government will bottle it on the transferability of staff between the wider public service and the civil service. They'll have to recognise Unions like SIPTU and IMPACT, and there's no way they'll want to disrupt their cosy arrangements with the yes men/women in CPSU/ PSEU.

Some of the ideas make perfect sense, like merging the public service and civil service, making it easier to sack inefficient workers and a more competitive promotion system.

Suggestions that substantial redundancies would be a good thing are madness, we already have a relatively small public service (admittedly poorly utilised and over paid in higher management positions) and adding to the dole queues would be a disaster.

It does look like it'll take years for any if the changes to be implemented and the unions will probably make it extremely difficult.

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Originally Posted by passinginterest

Some of the ideas make perfect sense, like merging the public service and civil service, making it easier to sack inefficient workers and a more competitive promotion system.

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In our place it's always been open competition for promotion, and promotion on seniority is being phased out in the Civil Service anyway. It should be remembered, the restrictions on sacking people are in place to stop political intereference.

I think its about 8% of all promotions based on "Senior/Suitable". By far most promotions done by competition

I know promotions are now competitive but the process could certainly be more transparent. Many interview boards for internal promotions can be very unfairly stacked, my own department has only just started to come around to the idea of having one external independent member on interview panels. The open competitions run my the PAS are excellent and I've been successful through these at both CO and EO levels in the last 3 years (I count myself among the civil servants that are under utilised, hence the time I spend on here lately).

I think joining the public service to the civil service should provide more variety of positions and flexibility to workers so I can't really see a problem with this. Issues will occur with the different gradings and it will be things like this that cause the biggest delays and issues with the unions.

Ideas like centralised purchasing and IT systems are also sensible, but raise issues about competitiveness and fairness. The different Departments running their own services means a variety of different companies provide resources to different departments, if one centralised supplier was required it would deny service providers access to a very lucrative business, possibly putting them under strain.

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Originally Posted by passinginterest

Ideas like centralised purchasing and IT systems are also sensible

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The only time something similar was tried was PPARS...

The Devil or Angel is in the detail with all of this.