The Future of the Public Sector

I see I am running the risk of being accused of “playing the man and not the ball”. No personal attack intended – Mr. Tuohy may indeed be the exception that proves the rule, but simply seeking to illustrate a more general point. And perhaps, some frustration that there seems to be no evidence that those wielding power, influence and authority have the faintest idea of the extent of reform required – or even interest in contemplating what is required.

Paul,

Brendan Touhy was the most innovative and progressive Secretary General of any Department in a very long time. It is just a little too easy to engage in this constant, senseless and destructive public sector bashing at every opportunity!

@Paul

The process which produced NAMA, I suspect, is very much a political and ideological one.It links directly to the Galway race tent and the relationship between FF and developers and bankers. It was sugested by a consultant economist/develper with strong FF ties.I doubt if you can lay the blame for NAMA on the shoulders of civil servants.

Brendan Touhy has a few very good ideas. I suspect that if it’s ever going to happen that this will be the way to start. I remember years ago looking at an advertised job in DunLaoghaire – Rathdowne Council – it was project managing something or other. I was pretty qualified to do it I felt. And when I phoned them to ask how to apply I was told that it was open only to existing employees other county councils or the public sector. It wasn’t a recruitment embargo thing it was just a restriction they placed.

It was, of course, discriminatory but I could get no reason for it in terms of suitability for the job. It struck me that thay were restricting their talent pool to a much smaller than desirable size.

On a slightly related question – does anyone know the % of the public sector that are on fixed-term or renewable contracts and the extent to which being on these contracts presents a real danger that they may be terminated due to lack of money or poor performance….?

BT is a man that definitely should be listened to.

But:

“Subject to satisfactory performance over each period, the contract is renewed. If performance is not satisfactory, a process of performance development and improvement could be completed over a specific period. If this process does not yield the required results, and after due process, the contract is not renewed.”

How could a civil servant say no to a politician with such a contract over his head.

Also how many of the Drumcondra mafia would have been ‘in’ if positions were opened up 10 years ago?

@Vincent Byrne
The real problem is the corporation sole which makes the civil servant an extension of the Minister. Neither is accouontable, in our present system. As one observer put it, “when you talk to the civil servants, they blame the politicians and when you talk to the politicians, they blame the civil servants.”

Brendan Touhy is not half radical enough. We are living with the results of the kind of reform he advocates.
Following the late John Boland’s introduction of the Top Level Appointments Commission during the 1980s, many senior public service posts (eg. Secretary Generals of government departments, County Managers) now have 7 years terms of office. As these are Government appointments, there is nothing to stop the same person being re-appointed, for another term or even a shorter term, as has sometimes been done. There is nothing to stop the public service advertising every job, without any of the kind of restrictions that Paul MacDonnell has referred to.

“People are also demanding that the public service become more accountable and that it deliver more cost-effective and efficient services”

For a different perspective on what needs to be done to ensure accountability, I quote from an article which two friends and I wrote – during the last economic crisis here in the 1980s.

“Public sector reorganisation
There have been many attempts to improve the effectiveness of the government by making changes in the organisation of the public service. Among the more important ones were:
― the creation of some state-sponsored bodies;16
― the establishment of the Local Appointments Commission
and Civil Service Commission;
― the setting up of the Public Services Organisation Review
Group (Devlin Report) in 1966;
― the introduction of a new method of appointments for senior
civil servants in 1984.

None of these proposals has dealt with the need to separate clearly the Active and Representative Branches. The primary problem centres on the dual function of Cabinet Ministers —both executive and representative, which results from the fusion of the legislature and executive.

There is an increasing tendency to recognise the political nature of the public service function. It is realised that public servants cannot be invisible, without being ineffective as well. This view leads to the tendency to make public servants (even
In the civil service) public figures also. We have brought this trend to its logical conclusion and made the executive (and initiating) function the prerogative of a separately elected official (the head of the Active Branch).

If the Active Branch is to attract effective individuals it must allow them to exercise their power subject to predictable controls by the Representative Branch. The proposals for the legislative process allow initiatives to become law unless they are vetoed. The need for this kind of bias towards action is illustrated by the Bankruptcy Commission which reported in 1972. Although it had drafted a bill to lay before the Oireacthtas as part of its report, it took ten years before this bill reached the
floor of the Dáil.
(for the full argument see http://193.120.95.144/politics/design-for-democracy.pdf)

Even in the UK, Andrew Turnbull, a former head of the UK Home Civil Service and Secretary to the Cabinet has called publicly for a separation of powers see
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/73f524ca-4faa-11de-a692-00144feabdc0.html

Brendan Touhy says “Putting new wine in old wineskins rarely works in any organisation. Leaving in place the current structures to deliver the changes required will simply not work, as the system is incapable of delivering the reforms from within. In other successful public-sector reforms, it was the establishment of external oversight bodies, accompanied by the recruitment of new senior people, that drove the process.”

Can we have successful public sector reform without a major rethink of how we allocate our power to those who govern us and bring in new methods of ensuring that we can exercise the kind of oversight that he calls for, using checks and balances that are well tried elsewhere?

PS. Perhaps Brendan Touhy would provide some impetus towards this remaking of how we govern ourselves, if he were to give a warts and all account of the slow roll-out of broadband in this Republic! This would help us understand how the power of government has failed to ensure delivery of the kind of infrastructure that places like Sweden and South Korea take for granted. We would then have more insight into other similar failures eg. supplying potable water in many places.

@E76

“Would an updated Department of Health have been much worse than the HSE has actually turned out, as distinct from what was originally envisioned?”

Can you produce any evidence that the HSE has been a failure?

By ‘evidence’ I mean proper statistics, not just that the Irish Times says so.

Since the HSE was set up:

(a) Mortality rates in Ireland have fallen from 20% above the EU average to lower than the EU average.

(b) Life expectancy has gone from below the EU average, where it languished for well over a century, to above the EU average.

(c) Waiting-times for operations have fallen sharply.

(d) MRSA infection rates have fallen sharply.

(e) Infant mortality has fallen to one of the lowest in the developed world, and much lower than in the UK – a few years ago it was one of the highest in the developed world.

(f) The Gold Standard for health services in Europe is the Euro Health Consumer Index. This Index is produced by a Swedish organisation which measures health services in 33 European countries annually, based on criteria such as outcomes, waithing-times, infection rates etc. Before the HSE was set up, Ireland ranked 28th. In their most recent survey, published a few weks ago, Ireland ranked 13th (out of the 33).

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/breaking-news/ireland/irish-health-service-up-to-13th-in-european-rankings-14513789.html

@John
For a quintupling of health spending I would have expected a lot more. All of the customers are dissatified – that is usually a bad sign for any organisation. Are there many example where mass customer dissatifaction was delivered by an efficient, high quality organisation? If there are I’d like to know. “The customer is always wrong”. No, I am sure that is not how the saying goes.

@Michael Henniigan
“It is important to ask these questions and while I believe that no senior manager took a public stance on any issue of policy during the boom years, we should not just accept that it is stupid to stand on principle”

I think that it should be pointed out that senior managers in the Civil Service and indeed all civil servants are not allowed take public stances on issues of policy.The restrictions placed on civil servants in this regard are strictly adhered to. The very well informed economic debate on this site is not matched by informed comment on governance and how policy is made.
I strongly believe that there is a need for a whistle blowers charter within the service. I also strongly believe that reform is very much needed and that this reform needs to tackle the very culture that prevails within the service, a culture that shares authoritarianism and anti-intellectualism with the catholic church and FF!
Action on changing this is needed but will not happen so long as the debate is ill informed. Too many people are condemning what they think happens and others proposing changes to something that does not exist in the form that they think.
Lets commence honest debate and remember that some of those who know best what needs changing are prevented by law from entering the public discourse.There is a need, and I suspect that academic debate, and publications like the IPA Administration, may well provide the best public space for that discourse to take place without compromising the line between politics and administration.

@Robert.

Not quite sure what your point is. Civil Servants and most LA workers (not all public servants) are prohibited by law from engaging in political debate and activity. Civil Servants sacrifice the right of free speech in this regard for public service.My point, above, is about finding an appropriate public space for civil servants to contribute to informed discussion on how to improve our policy making.

@Eoin.

The position is that the Minister is the manager and the policy maker and the civil servant is there to administer the ministers will. There is a large literature dealing with the crossing of these lines in terms of the policy making aspect of civil service advice to a minister, and indeed, there can be a de facto policy making role in implementing decisions.However, it is not open to a civil servant to publicly contest a policy decision. Many senior civil servants opposed decentralisation, for eg, and did raise it through their association (union) but this type of action would be considered very rare I should think.
Without getting bogged down in explanation and debate the SMI process for example was begun by civil servants cloaked in an academic veil. Perhaps something similar is needed now.
The type of leadership shown by Whitaker and let me say by Brendan Touhy is rare. I am simply saying that there has to be a way to generate that type of leadership without being seen to usurp the demoratic will.