Are we getting value for money from our state institutions (RTE, civil service ect)?

I know a guy who works in a Revenue office. Long story short, he was a complete dosser, rude and was hated etc etc. Few complaints about him. Eventually a brave manager brought him through a PIP/grievance process. Very messy but he was backed to the hilt by his union. He kept his job but they came to an unofficial arrangement - he was moved to a new section and given no work and no interactions with work colleagues. Mutual agreement. He was happy to come in every day and read the paper or surf all day every day. They thought he might get the message and leave but he has been doing that for nearly a decade. He gets his increments as time passes but he has probably reached top of scale by now. A local 'legend' in that particular office. The manager that was brave enough to tackle it was passed over for promotion several times for rocking the boat it seems. I don't work in public sector so take the story whatever way you want. Very rare I imagine.

It's the senior civil servants I am more worried about. They are not accountable and halt progress. The permanent government like Watt.

In other news I applied for a new passport on Sunday and got it yesterday. Wow.

Of course there's a load of waste in the public sector. There's plenty of it in a lot of the private sector too. The key issues I see during my work with public sector bodies would include:

An inability to recruit good staff into skilled positions, public sector pay scales might be great for the low-level clerical admin positions when compared to private sector counter-parts but they're woefully uncompetitive in the technical roles. A majority of IT staff I've encountered in PS organisations are either graduates (who leave within a year or two for better pay in the private sector) or people who got placed in the IT department in the 80's because they were a hobbyist who had a Spectrum or Commodore machine at home. There are very few mid level to senior staff in these roles with relevant degree level qualifications.

Accountability (or being seen to "dot the i's and cross the t's" so that if anything goes wrong, it can't be pinned on you) has a huge impact on any PS project I've worked on (aside perhaps from the NTMA who didn't seem to have this culture IME). This blame culture often leads to huge amounts of time wasted in the attempt to be seen to do the right thing resulting in the classic case of the "meeting to set the agenda for the meeting about the meeting" when the actual meeting could have been covered in an exchange of emails.

Inability to shed poor performers. There are wastrels and layabouts in any large organisation but it's far, far easier for a private sector company to manage out an employee who isn't up to scratch than it is for the PS. A subset of this would be (and it's another effect of the stronger PS Unions) is the amount of employees in the PS with flexible / job-sharing / term-time type contracts which are inherently inefficient and avoided as such by the private sector. I'm not sure as to whether that's a criticism of the public sector for championing workers rights or the private sector for not measuring up in that regard though...

The simple reality that money spent by the Public Sector is never their own. An MD / CXO of a private sector company will always negotiate harder over a daily rate for a contractor or the cost of a new software package because the outcome of that negotiation is far more likely to impact on their profit, bonus or ability to negotiate their next raise. Those tendering for projects know this and, as such, you'll often find the rates quoted to the PS will be higher than the same project might be quoted for in the private sector.

Can the PS be more efficient? Yes. Can it ever be as efficient as the private sector? Probably not. Is any of that a good argument for out-sourcing all of these roles to the private sector or cutting their budgets so tax rates can be reduced? No.

I worked in the Revenue for years and will admit that we had our share of dossers, but in the main I would say that 99% of the staff did their job. It is the 1% that is the issue and I would say that it happens in the private sector also. I had one lad who just would not do anything, despite being passed over and not receiving increments, and it did not knock a breeze out of him. If he was on the Titanic he would not even look for a lifeboat as it would come under the concept called work. All that happened was that he was moved from section to section each time the opportunity arose. I was unfortunate to have him for a year but got him moved on. Staff in his general seating area would not answer his phone as all they got was a telling off from the caller about something that our lad was supposed to do, that never happened. The thing is that there is so much red tape involved in bringing a case that if you know that s/he will be somebody else's problem in a few months you wont pursue the matter. I had another case of a person who who would not come in, but eventually got her removed from the payroll, which caused a change in attitude with her, but the amount of work that had to be done to get to that point was unreal. Questioned about conversations with the staff member etc and what did I write down? when did i write it down?