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Aaron McKenna wrote for TheJournal.ie about the ‘Lost Decade’ Ireland is facing into, and why we need a new vision for the nation to bring us through it. In this sixth part of hisseries on ways forward he outlines a vision for true government reform to provide better services and lower costs.
NO MATTER WHETHER you’re for big or small government you can surely agree that efficient government is something we’re short on in Ireland. Our state spends too much money to provide what it does, and it often doesn’t provide services at all that we might expect.
From over-stuffed bureaucracies passing paperwork around without achieving much to departments that can’t count the national debt, or the number of children being taught in school prefabs, or benefits handed out to rich and poor alike; we have an inefficient and ineffective government in many regards.
Inefficiency both wastes money and provides poorer outcomes. We have scores of specific examples of program failures, everywhere from the Comptroller and Auditor General’s reports to Freedom of Information revelations and our daily dealings with the State. The multiples of spending increases provided during the boom led to some good outcomes, but in many cases we saw money frittered away.
Even before the crash we were the land of a thousand quangos with citizens dying on hospital trolleys and a quarter of our teenagers functionally illiterate.
Attempts at reforming this in recent years have mostly revealed just how easy some savings could be attained, like better procurement policies, without tackling fundamental issues. The minister in charge of reform has set some example for his charges in attempting to get the highest salary of any political adviser for his own while approving cap busting ones for the stooges of other ministers.
‘Do as I say, not as I do’ is a fundamental leadership deficiency that stymies any reform process.
The public sector needs a root and branch reform that goes back to square one and establishes what every function of government is and what is required to fulfil that role down to every department, job description and work process. This is not unprecedented either in the private sector or in our own public sector.
The Department of Defence underwent a massive reform process in the 1990s which, while not perfect, was transformational. The mission of the Defence Forces was changing and the organisation needed to modernise to meet the challenge and to be able to participate in overseas missions.
The DoD brought in outside consultants and international expertise to the job and gave them complete access. Everything from training and equipment to facilities and civilian employees was looked at and a white paper produced that made recommendations on everything from units to uniforms. Much of it was acted on and our military reformed itself.
In the process the Permanent Defence Forces reduced in size by 37 per cent, civilian employees were reduced by 67 per cent and civil service employment by 50 per cent. Barracks were sold off and modernisation was the name of the game with old work practices thrown out wholesale.
A cynic might remark that soldiers can’t go on strike, and have a life or death vested interest in their organisation being as modern and effective as possible. But the DoD reforms show a clear path to a better government: Take an honest fundamental look at what you’re doing, reassess what your goals are and how you are working to achieve them, take recommendations and implement them with buy in from your staff.
‘Reform’ does not come simply through a recruitment embargo that sees you lose key people indiscriminately, while hanging on to other roles you no longer need.
A lab in a hospital loses three of four technicians and must close when the remaining one goes on holiday. Meanwhile some county councils maintain the same number of people in their planning departments despite the construction sector collapse. That’s not reform.
Promised bonfires of quangos do not materialise, and even if they did the new amalgamated bodies wouldn’t lose a single person – despite the fact that it takes less administrators per head to run a larger body. If we decide a body is completely extraneous you can abolish the logo but nothing else.
The individuals in these jobs are likely hard working and diligent people. But we must decide whether the public sector is there as a work program, or to provide essential services in the best manner possible, perhaps firing administrators and keeping teachers.
When discussing reform unions like to say ‘It’s about protecting jobs.’ I would beg to differ: It is about creating a public service that provides the most benefit to all of us.
Politicians, senior public servants and union bosses opposing any real transformation are the enemy of anyone who encounters an inefficient state, who is angered by wasted money or is frustrated by working in an ineffective organisation.
The money we spend propping up an inefficient bureaucracy is money we can’t spend on key services. Money that must be cut bluntly from people who need it or taken out of the economy through growth killing taxes. It is a very fair comment that the majority of workers have no part in creating this problem and are just as trapped by it as others are frustrated. But we need to shed the recruitment embargo and create a public service that is as dynamic as any successful organisation.
It is natural to focus on the negative side of dynamic – cutting jobs that are not needed because of efficiencies made – but it has a positive side too. Most public servants I meet are frustrated at working in archaic organisations that stifle any creativity or genuine effort to serve and improve.
A modern and reformed public service should strive to become a more open and fluid organisation that focuses on outcomes, not process. Why not have a beanbag culture, hot-desking offices and flat organisational hierarchies to go alongside genuine performance reviews, an up-or-out work ethic and performance driven incentives?
Invest in a public service where people want to go to work with the best, to have training and advancement opportunities and a place where people can dip in and out of roles at different levels in their careers. Make it a fun and fulfilling place to work, not a staid and conservative body as it is today. Improve the lot of the typical public servant so that they can improve the service they offer us.
Aaron McKenna is Managing Director of the e-commerce company Komplett.ie. He is also writing a book on the future of Ireland to be published later this year.
You can read his previous pieces on the way forward for Ireland on TheJournal.ie here.
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Agreed! But the bureaucrat that is required to deliver this new government is the bureaucrat that is quite happy at the moment the way things are.
You clearly know nothing about the public service in Ireland. Could I suggest you do some research before throwing together articles based on current perceived wisdom and prejudice. I work in the public sector. The one you describe must exist in another solar system.
Gingerman, I work in the public sector and Aaron is spot on. Frontline staff are overworked, demoralised and fearful of the future while the bloated middle-management sector are secretly very aware of being surplus to requirements. We need a revolution!
Funny my wife works in the public sector and its exactly as described here.
Frontline staff working their a$$ off, while the rest pushes paper around and generally try to do as little as possible. Don’t even get me started on the sick leave and how it is totally abused.
Manager are promoted to Manager not due to the skills they have, but only because they have been in the system so long.
At one point she worked in an office where one of the guys came in at 10 every day, pushed papers around for an hour, then said he had a meeting and went to the gym for 2 hours. Nothing was done since the manager was the exact same. It’s systemic and needs to be stopped.
Well said, just one catch. Who are you taking to? I mean that in all seriousness, we all have to take responsibility for how the country is run, not always leave it with someone else.
Its very easy write these articles and very easy voice general opinion and then carry doing what we’re doing while we pat ourselves on the back for saying something that is common sense. But the truth is it has to go much further than that.
Why are we voting for the same people over and over again? Why are we constantly looking at “the system” as if we are somehow victims of it as oppose to being responsible for it.
Unless the PEOPLE of Ireland start admitting themselves that we are all responsible, then basic things like public sector reform will never happen.
Also, to echo what gingerman said, you haven some ridiculous sweeping generalisations in there too tbh.
I wonder who are the 24 who gave the thumbs down. Must be the managers in the public service
Examples? St James Hospital (one unidentified clinic for elderly). 6 (I counted) admin staff swarming around a desk talking about makeup and a leather jacket one of the staff was wearing. ONE harrassed looking staff nurse (senior) trying to get patients moving to be seen. This was not an emergency ward. She had to prompt these wastrels at the desk to do their job. A terrible waste of money, Fire the lot of them. Even if each of them is on 30k a year (complaining about it) that is 180k a year to talk about makeup and leather jackets. Shocking.
First, the HSE is an easy whipping boy, it’s a complete mess, it is like me using banks as an example to tar all private sector workers as egotistic risk takers who destroyed the economy. Secondly, front of house admin on €30,000 a year, they should be so lucky. Thirdly, do private sector companies not have the water cooler culture, have you ever had to wait in a shop whilst the staff chat amongst themselves, or am I to believe all private workers are drones that work solidly 9-5 that don’t even look up to acknowledge their colleagues? Yes it’s not acceptable but it’s not wholely confined to the public sector!
A lazy, pedestrian attack of the public sector. The sole purpose of this type of diatribe is to promote a book. Boring!
I completely agree. Croke Park protects the status quo and doesn’t allow the real reforms to take place. Young Fine Gael has been pushing this issue within the party for some time and I hope that Fine Gael TDs stand up to Labour and the Unions on this one and have Croke Park torn up and re-written. It’s a farce. It also protects the highest paid workers in the PS at the expense of frontline services. Completely wrong.
I was with you there until you wrote “Young Fine Gael”.
Does it really matter who brings it? As long as we get some fair and realistic policy that’s all that matters.
@Tom Sullivan, at least David has the courage to be up front about his political affiliations and I congratulate him on this, so many commentors on here hide behind anonymous titles, not refering to you Tom.
Fine Gael would need some credibility. Where are they going to get that?
Suddenly FG becomes friends of the working class?
I had a job in a company, the work was drying up. There was not enough money to pay the wages, and the banks stopped the overdraft.
I was let go, along with a few others.
Why can’t this happen in the public services?
We are all equal, no?
Was benchmarking simply a way of getting more money? Or should it have meant that you risk losing your job if there is no work for you, or that you are lazy, or bad at your job, or that we can’t afford inefficiencies anymore?
Could I have some examples please and not just a fact free diatribe against civil servants because it’s in vogue. Also what does “number of children school prefabs” mean? You’ve lost me with that one!!
He said number of children taught in prefabs. I can assure you they’re not conducive to proper learning; they freeze in winter and swelter in summer. And as for examples a friend of mine applied for a summer contract in the tax office, heard nothing until september and when she finally started her summer contract in november she and her entire office spent 3 weeks out of every 4 doing nothing. You can find inefficiencies in any workplace but when you don’t have to show a profit to a board it’s a lot easier to allow waste to creep in.
No offense but he’s edited that since this morning, if you have a look down through the thread I’m not the only person to have pointed this out! Whilst they are obviously not ideal half my school was being rebuilt when I was going there and I had nearly all of my lessons in prefabs and believe me it isn’t that bad and it didn’t effect my grades in the slightest. Yes there are inefficiencies but they aren’t half as bad as is being pointed out, either that or my department is an exception because I am never short on work and anyone seen spending too long on the phone or dossing gets a sharp enough dressing down, the main inefficiencies I can see in our place are in HR, procurement and the fact we are probably a bit top heavy on managers.
Are you joking me? Prefabs were bloody Baltic! German class on a Wednesday at 10.21, there was only 6 of us so we’d be demoted to the prefab. Our first port of call was to our lockers to get our coats because they were so cold. One day the teacher brought a little blow heater with him! That was over 10 years ago but it lives on in my memory!!!!!
I hope nobody has missed the irony of the managing director of Komplett.ie , a company that is being run itno the ground and whos name is now synonymous with bad customer service and dire order processing, writing a column describing how to run something properly!
Get your own house in order Aaron, and then do some homework before you jump on the bandwagon. This column in an embarrassment and indicative of why the once great komplett.ie is now being avoided like the plague by my counterparts in the IT industry. You obviously run the company with the same ignorance and aversion to facts as you have displayed here for us all to see.
Another bashing of the public sector, wow what a novel article! The workers in the public sector make up the fibre of this country, teachers, nurses, gardai are holding things down in the face of lessening respect for the vital jobs and services they provide! This has just become one giant race to the bottom fueled by uninformed media commentators just purporting what is popular and not what is true…
I suggest you re-read the article. I believe the article did differentiate between the hard working frontline staff and the bureaucratic middle management – “perhaps firing administrators and keeping teachers!”
As for your comment that ” workers in the public sector make up the fibre of this country” – I hardly think so!
Just so I know where to go Aaron, where in the world can I go to see an example of this civil service… I want to meet these self actualised bureaucrats sitting at hot desks and bean bags reviewing their outcomes instead of their processes….
The public service quoting frontline.staff. Well thats a hard one to argue. Nurses doctors & all such persons are not the ones I complain about. No but I’ll give a list. Dept of transport,social protection,fas,environment. As a business owner I have had dealing with all these & my experience has been terrible. The usual is “because of a large number of calls we now only deal with this matter up to 12 o clock in the day” . “Sorry thats not my department”. “opening hours are between 0930 to 1245 & 1400 to 1630″. “We’ll have to call you back” but never do. “That person is off today”. The private sector does not operate like this & to suggest that there is an element of this in it is not accurate. If this happened in a private company the end result would be closure. So we can do the merry dance & I am not suggesting that whats wrong with the public service is the employees but I as a citizen of Ireland no longer want to pay for bad services. If it doesnt work properly privatise it or close it. Alot of work done in these departments could be outsourced to the private sector. And before I get the private sector couldnt manage the private sector manages everything in society & when it messes up it goes bust thats the reality.
Cliché watch!
“Overstuffed bureaucracies passing paperwork”, “root and branch reform”, “firing administrators”, “inefficient state”, “waste of money”, “inefficient bureaucracy”. Repeating the same catchphrases won’t make them true. But it does make this article boring.
Nothing new here – just another talking head trying to flog a book. I hope he has a good editor (“number of children school prefabs”??)
With Civil Servants ability to use opinions in law they can do as they please.
They demonstrate their ability to assume authority by stealing from social welfare recipients to save money and look after their interests at all times. The more they save, the better off they are.
As demonstrated in a Dail Eireann question time from Enda Kenny. a couple of weeks ago, he will not be letting go the money collectors any time soon. Politicians know how well to build their little empires and nothing can tear them apart.
Who exactly is Aaron McKenna? I mean, he’s not a particularly good writer and he doesn’t have any relevant authority or experience… so why is he being treated like our guiding, forward-facing light on this site?
Another article complaining about civil servants. I’m not a civil servant nor is anyone related to me so I have no vested interest. But do we really need another column to demoralise an already demoralised group.
No job is ever as easy as it seems on paper. I’m sure the bashing they regularly receive doesn’t help. Give them a break fgs. Their jobs were advertised. We could all have applied for them but chose not to.
Frontline staff are great too but I imagine that they also appreciate the behind the scenes workers.
It’s the guys on the top floor of the civil service that are the ones calling the shots and running the country. Time Enda called them in for their report card.
Most authors of articles such as this have an accompanying bio. We know nothing about you Mr. McKenna, or your qualifications etc., therefore your opinion as it stands at the moment is of as much value to me as my dog’s turds.
Sent 3 emails to the local Council about rubbish dumped on our street, each email a week apart, finally got a reply to the third email saying they’d look into it straight away, that was a week ago, no update, if I had a euro for every such example i’d be a millionaire. If I didn’t respond and resolve an email query or phonecall within 24 hours (including outside office hours) in my private sector job i’d be pulled aside. A colleague spent 1 year in the Department of Justice and was told ‘get ready, this is the busiest place in the civil service’, he had to leave because it was so soul destroying, meetings from 10-12, then lunch, then meeting from 2-4 with no conclusion to decide on the smallest matters, when the majority were challenged to make quick and efficient decisions they responded to with disgust. Another colleague’s husband worked in the Armed Forces and received a phonecall from HR asking why he hadn’t taken all his ‘duvet days’ for the calendar year. We could get a massively improved public sector, civil service in particular with 25% of the workforce if there was a proper work ethic and culture of efficiency established, never going to happen though, if these guys went on strike it wouldn’t matter, nobody answers the phone anyway.
Get up off your arse, get some neighbours together and clean up the mess ya lazy git!
Whats a duvet day? Your making stuff up! He was probably reminded he was in a position where he would lose annual leave.
@John. I didn’t know you needed letters after your name to qualify to write an article. If that is true most of the staff at the national papers would be on the dole. I am also concerned about the tone as it implies people without letters after their names are less intelligent – this I find offensive. As most public and civil servants take so much of the taxpayers money to further their education during working hours it is insulting to then condemn those who paid for their wages and their education. I also have noticed over that it never mentions how many times people repeat exams to get the letters or where they came in the class. The arrogance expressed by your comments display your stupidity not your strength of intellect.
What a stupid comment! I am a nurse working in the public sector. I am in the middle of a masters degree and have paid every penny of it from my own pocket. I have been given zero hours study leave by my employer, nor have I been given any time off to go to college. It is ignorant and ill informed imbeciles like you, who make up information to fit the point they are trying to make, that have caused the public/private sector divide in this country. “most” public sector workers do no such thing as “take money from the taxpayer” to further their own education. Public sector workers pay just as much as tax as private sector workers, by the way. Another inane comment from you.
All this coming from someone who’s running a company that became notorious for inefficiency and taking peoples money without supplying them with goods in return? I reckon that you’ve a bit of a cheek matey
Just a bunch of vague platitudes with no genuine ideas about how to achieve these wonderful results. Obviously the only way to protect jobs in the long term is to make things more efficient. It makes me think you’re just trying to stir up controversy and make your name known.
Aaron: do we have to buy the book to find out how we’ll be saved?
Anyone know what the next plane 2 ozz departs, never heard so many drama queens in all my life
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