Ceist re: Decentralisation of the civil service.

Dubhdog

Would it have been better for the government to carry out completely, or completely reverse the decentralisation process; rather than for the process to have been partially implemented and then abandoned?

nuac

I believe the decentralisation of the Civil Service should proceed.

We should not have to travel to Dublin for everything.

With modern technology communication between offices is easy,.

All Civil Servants on appointment should agree in writing to serve whereever located by Government

Riskymove

nuac wrote: »

I believe the decentralisation of the Civil Service should proceed.

We should not have to travel to Dublin for everything.

With modern technology communication between offices is easy,.

All Civil Servants on appointment should agree in writing to serve whereever located by Government

most decentralisation involved administrative work that does not require customers to visit

can ypou give examples of what you have to travel to Dublin for?

cyclopath2001

Dubhdog wrote: »

Would it have been better for the government to carry out completely, or completely reverse the decentralisation process; rather than for the process to have been partially implemented and then abandoned?

It should be reversed so as to concentrate staff in Dublin, thus facilitating moving staff from one job to another as needed during PS restructuring. Only positions that need to be close to their customers should be decentralised, e.g. dole offices, social workers.

Sunnyisland

How many of the people involved were in favor of decentralisation ?

It seemed a great Idea in theory ?

Avns1s

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

It should be reversed so as to concentrate staff in Dublin, thus facilitating moving staff from one job to another as needed during PS restructuring. Only positions that need to be close to their customers should be decentralised, e.g. dole offices, social workers.

With the communications technology we have today, why would you need the jobs to be in Dublin to facilitate PS restructuring. Surely, non customer oriented roles can be carried out in any location where a number of staff can be accommodated.

markpb

nuac wrote: »

With modern technology communication between offices is easy,.

In my experience (having worked in companies whose offices were split across Dublin, across Ireland and across Europe) email, conference calls, video conferencing don't work as well as a face to face meeting. I'm not suggesting that all communication should be face to face but neither do I think it's realistic to think none should be either.

All Civil Servants on appointment should agree in writing to serve whereever located by Government

While this sounds good on paper, it rarely happens in real life - not even in the private sector. If your company moved from Dublin to Cork tomorrow, you'd probably be unhappy. If you were married with kids in school, you'd be even unhappier.

Personally, I think the civil service should be as flexible as possible and people should be able to be transferred from one unit to another when the need arises. Keeping those units hundreds of miles apart will a) make it more difficult, b) make it slower and c) make it more expensive.

Lemming

Decentralisation would save zero money and probably definitely (given the incompetence organising it) cost the excheqeuer more again as the government now has to maintain rent and/or maintenance plus running costs on more locations, not less.

Decentralisation was - at the time - driven by the then Finance minister (which says a lot, as such a concept was not his brief). It has to date been a failure because it required staff to do on a voluntary basis. You either have to move whole departments or not for it to be effective in any way shape or form, and given how difficult it seems to be to get the PS-unions to agree to using pens provided by a different supplier, trying to move an entire dept. would involve blue-murder. What the public got was departments split across multiple locations with half-arsed implementation and significant additional cost with zero (I'd dare say negative) improvement on service.

There is also only so much that modern IT infrastructure can do before you start to hit walls in effective communication, before anyone tries to parrot that line.

dsmythy

Sense to me would be if the office has moved leave it rather than move it back again. If it hasn't moved yet and decentralisation is not on the agenda then leave them where they are.

Lemming

dsmythy wrote: »

Sense to me would be if the office has moved leave it rather than move it back again. If it hasn't moved yet and decentralisation is not on the agenda then leave them where they are.

Depends if they've moved an entire office (and it's cost efficient) or not. If it's costing more money to maintain in the long-run then it's a no brainer to take a short-term hit to get a long term saving. "It's the economy, stupid" as Bill Clinton so famously phrased it. So many policies in Ireland seem not to be thought out beyond the length of the current Dail, and it shows.

Benny_Cake

Most of the projects that were cancelled yesterday never even started,whereas the projects that will continue largely have staff and buildings in place.Decentralisation might have worked had the entirety of 2 or 3 departments been moved to another large town or city-it would have been a lot easier to find the staff to move.Instead,bits of departments and state agencies were thrown around the 43 constituencies for alley political reasons.As a civil servant myself who was partly affected by it I'll be glad to see the back of it-it left people with a lot of uncertainty about their futures and really made day-to-day communications a lot more difficult than it needed to be.

thebman

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

It should be reversed so as to concentrate staff in Dublin, thus facilitating moving staff from one job to another as needed during PS restructuring. Only positions that need to be close to their customers should be decentralised, e.g. dole offices, social workers.

Yeah spend millions reversing it, good on ya that is some fantastic logic your using there.
/sarcasm.

nesf

Decentralisation would have been fine if they moved the offices to the other major population centres but they were moving departments to rural towns ffs. Pure populist vote buying.

cyclopath2001

thebman wrote: »

Yeah spend millions reversing it, good on ya that is some fantastic logic your using there.
/sarcasm.

The logic is that we need to concentrate staff so that they can more easily move from one department to another as needed, since they would not need to move house, just change bus route.

It could be accomplished over a period of time by running down the staffing of smaller offices around the country, especially the quangos.

thebman

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

The logic is that we need to concentrate staff so that they can more easily move from one department to another as needed, since they would not need to move house, just change bus route.

It could be accomplished over a period of time by running down the staffing of smaller offices around the country, especially the quangos.

Good luck getting them to move two doors down even let along change bus route.

Can't even get people in a barracks down the road from another to drive to the other one in this country.

Sack the lot of them, problem solved. Makes as much sense as your proposal IMO.

nesf wrote: »

Decentralisation would have been fine if they moved the offices to the other major population centres but they were moving departments to rural towns ffs. Pure populist vote buying.

Define rural town.

Godge

nesf wrote: »

Decentralisation would have been fine if they moved the offices to the other major population centres but they were moving departments to rural towns ffs. Pure populist vote buying.

Correct, a Department for every hick town that had a FF TD.

nesf

thebman wrote: »

Define rural town.

Take your pick out of the listed places. Some made some modicum of sense but none were more sensible options than Cork, Galway, Limerick, Waterford or (maybe) Athlone.

thebman

nesf wrote: »

Take your pick out of the listed places. Some made some modicum of sense but none were more sensible options than Cork, Galway, Limerick, Waterford or (maybe) Athlone.

Well I don't know which of those you disagree with. I don't see the problem with a town having some function decentralised to it if it won't impact on the delivery of services.

I'm not sure if that was the case in any of the projects TBH. I think it makes sense for a government to decentralise to black spot unemployment areas. I think most other countries such as Britain and Germany do similar decentralization though it might differ slightly.

Here is the list of projects:
http://www.decentralisation.gov.ie/DecProjectstobeleftinsituoradvanced.html

I don't have any ability to even suggest which ones might be crazy TBH.

nesf

thebman wrote: »

Well I don't know which of those you disagree with. I don't see the problem with a town having some function decentralised to it if it won't impact on the delivery of services.

I'm not sure if that was the case in any of the projects TBH. I think it makes sense for a government to decentralise to black spot unemployment areas. I think most other countries such as Britain and Germany do similar decentralization though it might differ slightly.

Here is the list of projects:
http://www.decentralisation.gov.ie/DecProjectstobeleftinsituoradvanced.html

I don't have any ability to even suggest which ones might be crazy TBH.

More, you want a pool of people to hire from and a large pool of other services that will make it attractive for good quality workers to live and work there. This is not provided by rural towns for most people due to a lack of services and a lack of a suitable labour pool.

Dannyboy83

They should have recentralized the whole thing in Galway.
Stuck a piece onto the city basically, kind of like Canary Wharf, custom built offices, no leasing, no nonsense

Pride Fighter

nesf wrote: »

Decentralisation would have been fine if they moved the offices to the other major population centres but they were moving departments to rural towns ffs. Pure populist vote buying.

I 100% agree. If it was to places like Waterford, Limerick, Cork and Galway it would be understandable but to other places it was just done as a vote getting exercise. I believe John O'Donoghue decentralised large parts of the department of arts tourism and sport to his home constituency.

Decentralisation was basically a disaster IMO. Genuine local government was the real answer, but was never pushed. Ireland is too top heavy and centralised, but this is due to neutered local government and not government departments being outside Dublin.

Sierra Oscar

Pride Fighter wrote: »

I 100% agree. If it was to places like Waterford, Limerick, Cork and Galway it would be understandable but to other places it was just done as a vote getting exercise. I believe John O'Donoghue decentralised large parts of the department of arts tourism and sport to his home constituency.

Decentralisation was basically a disaster IMO. Genuine local government was the real answer, but was never pushed. Ireland is too top heavy and centralised, but this is due to neutered local government and not government departments being outside Dublin.

Indeed. I actually think decentralisation is a good idea if done properly - but as you alluded to the process was hijacked by various Ministers intent on bringing their goodies back to local constituencies. The emphasis should have been placed (much of it was to be fair) on decentralisation the administrative functions to the large cities - Cork, Limerick, Galway & Waterford. It would still have been a positive impact for large towns across the hinterlands of these cities.

Benny_Cake

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

Indeed. I actually think decentralisation is a good idea if done properly - but as you alluded to the process was hijacked by various Ministers intent on bringing their goodies back to local constituencies. The emphasis should have been placed (much of it was to be fair) on decentralisation the administrative functions to the large cities - Cork, Limerick, Galway & Waterford. It would still have been a positive impact for large towns across the hinterlands of these cities.

That's the point - to the best of my knowledge nothing was scheduled to move to Galway or Cork under decentralisation. Given some of the towns that were to receive government offices,that should tell you all you need to know about the motivation behind decentralisation!