Efficiencies in the public service

Private Joker

I really don't want a public service bashing thread because i think there are too many of them already. I'd love to hear some real suggestions as to what the public would like to see in the way of reforms

I work in the public service( local authority ) and i find it hard to see where another 2 billion in cuts is going to come from without pay cuts .

Longer working days and less holidays should be considered , but this wouldn't solve any fiscal deficit as over time is non existent.

Richard tea

'' Longer working days and less holidays should be considered '' It is my belief that this global financial crisis was no accident/mistake. It was planned to make the rich even richer whilst taking away more of our freedoms. So no thanks, I & nor do I think anyone should be happy to welcome Longer working days and less holidays:(

Private Joker

I don't welcome it , but i would prefer it to further paycuts. I have friends on the dole who are better off than me. at the moment i'm hardly making ends meet and if pay cuts were on the cards , i'd join the union and i'd strike .

I maybe a public servant but i'm also a citizen of this country , who relies on and expects an efficient and motivated public service. It would be great if we could achieve this without further paycuts.

Welease

It's difficult for anyone who is non PS or not employed to perform a root and branch analysis to identify exact areas of potential savings.. Can you suggest how my company can save money?

A start may be to implement some of the McCarthy report suggestions.. He was talking in terms of rationalising headcount in some departments (iirc suggestions that HSE could shed ~6,500 people). It seems to be a well documented belief that there are swathes of middle management with little or nothing to manage.

Beyond that.. there are cost efficiencies in how work is done and services are implemented. we have had the high profile case of Ireland spending 100's of millions extra on branded drugs that were unnecessary, other countries purchase the unbranded versions.

Pensions need to be looked at.. If the private sector (even the pre crash banks) cannot afford to pay defined contribution pensions then how can our government afford to pay them? While it continues to pay them, there will be less available in wages for current staff.

Another example is efficiencies across/between departments.. It amazes me when I hear we don't restructure child benefit because it would cost more to implement that system than any potential savings. Why? I pay the top rate of tax.. the PS knows exactly how much my income is (revenue), why can't I be flagged in a system as non eligible for child benefit..You have to wonder about the inefficiencies in a system whereby it's considered cheaper to pay me 1,000's Euro per year rather than utilise information that they aready have.

The PS should be looking for these efficiencies and savings themselves in order to lower the total cost to the government which will result in less necessity to impliment pay cuts.. It should be taking the first step in the process, not implementing go slows which worses the situation.

Ebonhoof

The only area of the public service I worked in before working in the private sector was teaching so its the only area I feel I can talk about.

One thing that seemed particularly wrong to me was allowances. For example the vice principal of the school I worked in got extra pay for being the school librarian despite the fact the school didnt have a library.

I imagine similar practices happen elsewhere.

bog master

One area to look at is the look is basic efficiency and work practices to raise productivity, which was supposed to be done as part of the benchmarking process. Now I believe that process was a bit of a sham, have skimmed through it, and nowhere does it state how it came to the conclusions it did. I would have expected to some sort of values or formula used, C/S wages are x, Private is y, and to put a value on the job security and a value on the excellent Public Service pension, and arrive at a figure.

Also it seems the Civil Service is top heavy with administration and
supervisory staff. Can't find the link now, but it seems from 98-09, the number of Higher Principal Officers increased from 60 to 337 and Asst Higher Principal Officers from 171-751. Sounds like a case of to many Chiefs and not enough Indians.

Head The Wall

1. They should have people in accounts going through budgets analysing everything. Happens in large multinationals, you have to show a need for something and back it up before you are allowed to buy it, doesn't seem to be the case in the PS where they have the best of everything

2. Stop paying for staff parking in city centres. Move offices out off city centres also

3. Purchasing process, govt gets ripped off for everything they buy as staff buying are not accountable for over paying

Manach

"Head to Wall" has some good suggestions. However in point 3, purchase controlls, in the Private Sector have been froozen for the majority of orders. The wastage of time/effort/form filling to get anything but the most trivial of purchases seems to defeat the purpose of best use of resoruces.

simplistic2

Privatize every government sector that does not provide law enforement or defence.EASY!!

Count Dooku

I think that it is time to concentrate on cutting numbers, rather then salaries.

Main areas where you can easily achieve efficiencies is clerical and receptionists areas.
People can fill forms electronically, sign them, every official paper must have registration number as barcode. It should significantly improve departments performance.
There are plenty examples in private sector how to do it.
Have a look on Ryan air self chekin. Country cannot afford public services in present form and I sure that people will accept some inconvenience.
Another advantage is that making few clerks redundant will be not expensive as their manager, because redundancy package will be smaller.

Private Joker

Where i work we already have internal and external auditing.

there is a limit on expenses

We get a certain budget for different schemes, which has to be rigorously followed, because when the money is gone its gone.

We have a recruitment embargo.

From what i can see there is very little dead wood .

There is a lot of procedures and reporting put in place by the various departments which we deal with , this creates a load of work , but if we didn't have this then we'd loose accountability.

I worked in the public service both pre and post bench marking and although it has brought in more efficient work practices like pmds and time clocks. It has also created a top and middle heavy staff structre. These are the grades which benefited most from the bench marking process . the lower grades got between 3 and 6% increases while the management grades got upwards of 10% increases.

This top heavy structre has resulted from the loss of contract staff through the recruitment embargo, as most of them were lower grades.

I think there should be a staff structre review of the public service, which should be based on best international practice. this could be done without any job losses, by offering early retirement to the grades which are deemed superfluous and offering them a job at a lower grade on a contract basis.

I really think the public sector lower grades have paid enough in terms of pay cuts and pension levies. Most in the public sector dont want to strike , all we want is to get on with our jobs .

sogg

Stop effectively penalising departments for remaining within budget by cutting their budget the following year. This leads to a culture of December panic where every last penny is spent on things really not priority just so it looks on paper like your budget is warranted.

axer

Ebonhoof wrote: »

One thing that seemed particularly wrong to me was allowances. For example the vice principal of the school I worked in got extra pay for being the school librarian despite the fact the school didnt have a library.

Those posts of responsibility for teachers was the worst thing they ever brought in. They have changed the rules now that posts are not refilled when somebody leaves a job. This has caused all sorts of problems whereby teachers are unwilling to take up responsibilities because someone else is getting paid extra for their responsibilities. They should have just dropped the whole extra payment for responsibilities system in its entirety in one go.

I know of one case whereby the principal of a primary school is getting an extra 3k or something a year for using the online system for registering pupils but she is actually not even doing the work - she passed the work to the school secretary who is getting nothing extra for learning and using the system.

Welease

Private Joker wrote: »

I think there should be a staff structre review of the public service, which should be based on best international practice. this could be done without any job losses, by offering early retirement to the grades which are deemed superfluous and offering them a job at a lower grade on a contract basis.

If the job shouldn't exist then get rid of those staff (without golden handshakes/early pensions/contract positions).. thats exactly how any broke employer in the real world has to deal with the problem..

Private Joker

Welease wrote: »

If the job shouldn't exist then get rid of those staff (without golden handshakes/early pensions/contract positions).. thats exactly how any broke employer in the real world has to deal with the problem..

Its not that the staff aren't needed, its that they are in a management .
By offering them early retirement you're not loosing expertise, and you are re-organising staff strutres that will show benefits into the future .

murphaph

Ireland does not need 86 planning authorities for a start!! Yes, we have 86 different planning departments (all the county councils, plus the city councils plus the town councils...all running their own planning departments).

There are BILLIONS to be saved in local government and administration like the above. To be honest, what are we still doing with county councils laid out by the British 500 years ago? These areas are too small for modern government and could easily be rationalised.

I would move towards an amalgamation of the county councils roughly along provincial lines, INCLUDING the cities (to ensure sensible land use at city/county boundaries and avoid the nonsense that goes on between Kilkenny and Waterford and Limerick and Clare etc.). I would remove TDs from loocal politics completely by introducing party lists nationwide or on a provincial basis. Let regionally elected councillors have real power to administer things in the regions and let TDs make national law.

Obviously we'd save a fortune by amalgamating all those IT, payroll, HR, etc. departments of all these small county councils into regional governments along the lines of the provinces. There would be job losses through increased efficiency of course but if the efficiency is there to be found then the job was only a made up one to begin with so better to pay people 200 quid a week (less in future) to sit at home than 400 a week to sit in an office.

Take roads maintenance as another example...we have a disjointed system that results in a lack of joined up road signage and maintenance between the counties. You could be following direction signs in one county and then they will suddenly disappear in the next (on local and regional roads). The NRA, though also prone to mistakes, has shown the way and I believe roads above all would benefit from 4 large regional administrations rather than 86 local authorities. In Northern Ireland all roads maintenance and building is performed by one body, NIRS, even though they have a rake of local authorities too, so it is possible that the NRA could take over maintenance of roads from the councils immediately and begin centralising and streamlining things. Ireland is a really small country so this is readily achievable.

The NRA would obviously be able (in this scenario) to bargain down contract prices for work and outsource a LOT more work. This is just an example. we need to lose the GAA county jersey sentimentality and move on with local government reform.

Welease

Private Joker wrote: »

Its not that the staff aren't needed, its that they are in a management .
By offering them early retirement you're not loosing expertise, and you are re-organising staff strutres that will show benefits into the future .

???

If they are not needed in management positions, then get rid of them.. thats what every other company in the world does..

Why offer them early retirement? That is another example of unnecessary cost inefficiencies.. Give them the base statutory minimum and a goodbye.. Again thats what every other company in the world has to do (some may pay more than staturory, but it's a case by case basis).

You cannot claim to be looking for international best efficiencies when your stated aim seems to be to have 0 job losses.. There is plenty of documented evidence that 1000's of roles should not exist within the PS. That is nowhere near international best..

If you want to look at an example, look at Intel.. they have shed close to 40,000 positions in the last few years while continually remaining in profit.. Rightly or Wrongly that is looking for efficiency.. job protection as an ultimate aim is not efficiency..

Private Joker

murphaph wrote: »

Ireland does not need 86 planning authorities for a start!! Yes, we have 86 different planning departments (all the county councils, plus the city councils plus the town councils...all running their own planning departments).

Where have you gotten this figure from?

We don't have 86 planning departments. A town council does not have its own planning department, it may have a planner assigned to it but one planner does not a department make.

SLUSK

Ebonhoof wrote: »

The only area of the public service I worked in before working in the private sector was teaching so its the only area I feel I can talk about.

One thing that seemed particularly wrong to me was allowances. For example the vice principal of the school I worked in got extra pay for being the school librarian despite the fact the school didnt have a library.

I imagine similar practices happen elsewhere.

If he gets paid for doing a librarians work without him actually doing that kind of work at all most people would consider that to be fraud. Why did you not report him to the police for his fraudulent activities?

SLUSK

simplistic2 wrote: »

Privatize every government sector that does not provide law enforement or defence.EASY!!

Privatize law enforcment and defence also

MagicSean

SLUSK wrote: »

Privatize law enforcment and defence also

If people think the gardaí are bad imagine what it would be like if you were dealing with a company in it for profit.

srdb20

So you would privatise the gardai and the defence forces. That has to be one of the stupidest things ive ever heard.

Can you please explain why you would do his? And what possible positives it would provide.

ixoy

k_mac wrote: »

If people think the gardaí are bad imagine what it would be like if you were dealing with a company in it for profit.

As much as I think we need privatisation in areas of the PS/CS, the idea of a company running the Gardai is is a bad one - do we really want something like BlackWater here in Ireland?
If it's a private company then, they'd be answerable to shareholders or their board. They'd want profit and be keen to meet deliverables to achieve that, which could include certain arrest targets (bit like clampers). Could lead to very murky waters.

MagicSean

srdb20 wrote: »

So you would privatise the gardai and the defence forces. That has to be one of the stupidest things ive ever heard.

Can you please explain why you would do his? And what possible positives it would provide.

There was a case study of this area. It's called Robocop. Available in most video shops. I think in the case study it led to an overall reduction in human rights and interaction with the public but an increase in productivity.

srdb20

Certain sectors (I.e gardai and army) of the public service can't be privatised which is why the government provide them. To have them as a private business or company would undermine the service they provide and the values on which there built

dromdrom

Following on from MurpMaph's excellent post I think the municipal organisation is one of the biggest areas where we can see change. 12-14 larger municipal bodies instead of the current system would certainly have scope for efficiencies as long as it would be handled better than the amalgamation of the health boards into the HSE. Another area that could definitely be looked at is the semi states, the privatization of CIE and ESB while politically unpalatable could yield significant savings for the exchequer and the have positive effects for the economy as a whole, if we sold ESB and used some of the proceeds to complete the inter-connector to the U.K we would be able to have a dual island energy market exposing the ESB to the full rigors of competition which can only have positive effects.

murphaph

Private Joker wrote: »

Where have you gotten this figure from?

Archiseek forum, will have to find the post now...

Private Joker wrote: »

We don't have 86 planning departments. A town council does not have its own planning department, it may have a planner assigned to it but one planner does not a department make.

Do you know how many planning departments there are in the country? Do we need this many?

Do we need town councils at all? All comes under the heading of "Ireland is too small for such subdivision" to me.

RichardAnd

I don't see how 2 billion or so can be saved without pay cuts or letting people go. Personally, I'm ambivalent about this "reform" that is being spoken of. I worked for the civil service for a number of years and one thing I saw again and again is wastage of money. I would be very wary of any attempts at reform as I believe that they would simply spend a pound to save a penny.

Where I worked, there was a system called PMDS brought in to "increase productivity". Basically this is a system where workers and managers decide their goals for the year. It's based on work practices used by companies like Microsoft but unlike Microsoft, the civil service take is simply a big fire fueled by money. Not one person I knew took it seriously and even if they did, the entire system was an over complex, extremely tedious pile of crap that just created more work.

If attempts are made to reform once more, I would not be at all surprised if this repeats itself. I've nothing against civil servants at all and I think they don't deserve alot of what's happening.

Sadly, the bottom line is this; the unions want pay and numbers left alone, promising that reform will save money. That will mean the same pay bills which we can't afford. Cutting staff pay and numbers will save money quickly and that, I thinkg, will be what happens.

recedite

sogg wrote: »

Stop effectively penalising departments for remaining within budget by cutting their budget the following year. This leads to a culture of December panic where every last penny is spent on things really not priority just so it looks on paper like your budget is warranted.

Good point. I know one semi-state department where they replaced all their computers just before Christmas just to spend the money, in case their budget would be cut the following year. The staff took them home as they were only about 2 yrs old.

As for longer hours and productivity;
You have to realise that the cuts are a separate issue. The money just wasn't there, think of it as benchmarking. The public do not need increased productivity right now, but as services deteriorate due to the recruitment embargo it will be required. So for now, just enjoy your short hours.:)

Tipp Man

Nobody in this country wants to see the public service cuts more than myself but some of the "ideas" in here are just plain stupid

You simply cant privatise everything, nor should we want to. Civil and Public servants are a necessity for any country, items such as judiciary and Gardai simply cannot work for profit making organisations nor do i think we should ever want them to.

However there are huge changes that could be made to the current situation which would dramatically reduce our public sector bill, but rather than focus on specifics we actually need to get general practices in place first.

1) the idea of a job for life is simply farcical - all PS workers should be the same as private sector workers so if there is work to be done you hire somebody, if the work dries up you say thanks but goodbye

2) pensions - PS workers seem to have no idea how good their pension entitelements are. The PS pension needs to be stopped sharpish, and employ a system closer to a private scheme such as government pays 5%, employee pay 5% etc - obviously defined contributions as opposed to defined benifit

3) there needs to be a proper system of annual review of each employee and wages adjusted accordingly so somebody doing an excellent job gets a pay rise, somebody doing feck all gets nothing but a warning. Like any company that succeeds you actually need a level of staff turnover to bring fresh ideas and imputus to the organisation, when you have the same people doing the same jobs for 30 years it becomes stale and the people become institutionilised - that needs to change. Obviously linked to this is completly stupid and outdated idea of across the board benchmarking and automatic increment increases

4) not everybody on the same level should get the same wages, wages should be awarded on merit not on the position (linked to 3) so for example 2 teachers with 15 years experience should not be earning identical salaries IMO

5) Use of IT and a much better harmonisation of IT, Finance and HR resources across the board. Implementing much better procedures and systems in these areas could lead to huge savings and much better efficiency for both the public and the PS workers themselves

6) this is probably the most important of the lot but there needs to be a fundamental shift in the mentality of the PS workers and in particular their union representatives. Currently its all wrong, there is no emphasis on productivity or effeciency, its all about "our" terms and "our" conditions. Its ironic how the unions talk about the commi orientated greater good when their singlemindedness on items such as pay cuts, redundancies etc is to the detrimement of the entire country. This needs to change and the governement needs to be the boss - not the other way around. In fact to implement all of the above this step would have to be first achieved, how you do it I am not sure.

This is the direction I feel the government should be taking when they talk about PS reform