Decentralisation

Dinarius wrote:

There was a piece in the IT a couple of weeks ago stating that the Arts and Culture move to Killarney would commence shortly.D.

http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1428289&issue_id=12705
134: Out of 10,000 civil servants only this handful will meet deadline to move
ONLY 134 of the promised 10,000 civil servants will be moved by the December 2006 decentralisation target date. The full extent of the Government's difficulties on the thorny issue were exposed last night.
As Opposition parties dubbed it an unprecedented flop, the minister responsible for making it happen admitted that the original Charlie McCreevy deadlines for the decentralisation of so many were "unrealistic". Junior Minister Tom Parlon claimed it would be "full steam ahead" from now on.
"It takes time to organise something as large as this. There are staffing issues to be resolved, as well as planning and building new buildings. The important thing is that it is going to happen."
The issue has been a huge headache for the Government. The original three-year deadline, combined with huge opposition by civil and public servants as well as logistical problems, meant the timescale had to be pushed back. Late last year the Government slimmed down the proposals to a more realistic first wave of 3,400 officials.
It insisted the full 10,000 would be relocated in further waves. But Opposition parties claim not a single civil servant will be moved in time for the general election. Fine Gael's finance spokesman Richard Bruton said that despite an original promise of 10,000 civil servants being moved out of Dublin by the end of 2006, just 2pc of that original estimate will have been delivered.
"This Government got 2pc in their decentralisation exam, that's a failure in any one's language."
However, Mr Parlon claimed a number of other departments and agencies will follow soon after the first tranche. The Department of Finance will be the first to move. Staff will be relocated to Tullamore by September of next year. All the stops are to be pulled out to have finance officials in place as a showpiece to ensure their decentralisation plans do not crumble before the 2007 general election.
Mr McCreevy famously said that the Government deserved a massive public backlash if its decentralisation plan was not complete by the next election.
Efforts to gently break it to communities that their promised jobs won't arrive on time couldn't come at a worse time for the Government. This morning, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny and Labour leader Pat Rabbitte hold their first meeting to negotiate a strategy for an alternative government.

ishmael whale wrote:

The report is skirting around the costs identified. For example, there seems to be a proposal that ICT staff would be replaced by non ICT staff put through a selection process and certified training for the roles they will be fulfilling.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2091-1687973,00.html
July 10, 2005

Fianna Fail councillor wins decentralisation contract
RICHARD OAKLEY


ONE of the first contracts to be awarded under the government’s decentralisation plan has gone to a Fianna Fail councillor. John Flanagan, a property developer who sits on Tullamore town council, has sold a building in the Co Offaly town to the state that will be used to house the relocated Department of Finance. Both Flanagan and the Office of Public Works (OPW), which awarded the contract, have refused to say how much was paid in the deal.
The office block, which needs further construction work, will become the home of the Department of Finance when it moves from its current location on Merrion Street next year. The building is situated in the Central Business Park in Clonminch in Tullamore, where Flanagan, a businessman, owns up to 25 acres.
The OPW said the contract was awarded through the normal tendering process to Flanagan because his offer was the most competitive. The building, which is located near three other government departments, was the most suitable, it said. Flanagan confirmed the sale this weekend, but refused to discuss the details.
The deal with Flanagan is one of two involving private developers that has been finalised recently. A second contract for land in Clonakilty in Co Cork has been awarded to Michael McCarthy, the owner of Carbery Plastics. McCarthy has won the contract to supply a site for the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources. He was not available for comment this weekend and no further details were available from the OPW.
Fas, the state training agency, is to buy a site in Birr, Co Offaly, for at least €275,000 an acre for its new HQ under the decentralisation plan. The move has been provisionally approved by the Department of Finance. The 5.9-acre site is likely to cost at least €1.6m. The price per acre is substantially more than the €200,000 per acre the state controversially paid for land at Thornton in Dublin where a new prison complex is to be built. Joan Burton of the Labour party said the price was “shocking”, but Fas said it had sought professional advice on the move.
A total of 400 staff are needed in Birr by 2009 to make the move work, but so far only 41 Fas staff have said they are prepared to move from Dublin. The government has been strongly criticised for its insistence on pushing ahead with decentralisation despite a reluctance from civil servants to volunteer to move. Details of the cost of property deals are likely to add to this pressure.
Burton said: “The whole process now features significant elements of farce and at the end the taxpayer is going to be left with a huge bill.” Unions representing civil servants want the decentralisation plan, due to be completed by 2009, to be extended over the next 10 years.
Last week it emerged that only 134 of the 10,000 civil servants earmarked for decentralisation would be relocated by the government’s original deadline of 2006. Tom Parlon, the minister with responsibility for the OPW, has said the full cost of decentralisation cannot be known at this stage. He has defended the progress made so far and argued that much of the land will be obtained at good prices.

smccarrick wrote:

....From the flexitime system with a core of 10AM to 12.30 and 2.30 to 4.00, people are now being told they are on shift work, on a 7 day week basis, and no longer have public holidays/bank holidays off. ...

THE absurdity and wastefulness of the government's decentralisation programme was highlighted once more with the disclosure that at least 6,000 public servants will be left in Dublin, on the state payroll but with nothing to do, when the whole process is complete. As a measure of government incompetence this takes the biscuit.

The Minister for Finance, Brian Cowen, would do the state some service if he just called a halt to the farce right now. It should be possible to put some scaled down version of decentralisation into operation but the plan as it stands is not just mad, it is bad on every level.

The huge expense involved in paying thousands of civil servants in Dublin to do nothing for the rest of their careers, and then paying them index-linked pensions for the rest of their lives, is not even the worst aspect of the plan. Neither is the hugely expensive property acquisition programme, ridiculous and all as it is.

The truly damaging and dangerous aspect of decentralisation is that the civil service is being systematically wrecked on a whim. The implications of that dreadful policy error will be with us for decades, if the programme proceeds as planned, and future generations will look back on the mistake with incredulity.

One of the foundation stones of Irish democracy has been a committed and generally incorruptible civil service. The structure was bequeathed to a newly independent Ireland by the British in 1922 and was subsequently built on by the founders of the state who ensured that the civil service remained independent of party politics.

Over the decades there have always been calls for some kind of decentralisation programme and in fact an extensive programme did take place from the 1970s onwards. Departments like Social Welfare, Education, Environment and the Revenue Commissioners established large offices at various points around the country.

More than a third of the civil service engaged in the delivery of services to the public was decentralised in this programme but the headquarters of each department remained in Dublin, at the centre of political power. It was the decision to send whole departments and state agencies out of the capital that struck at the heart of the system.

What made it worse was that the dismantling of a structure, which served the nation for 80 years, was casually announced by Charlie McCreevy in his budget of 2003. There was no prior consultation or detailed assessment of the policy options, no memorandum to government or Dail debate or engagement with all the interest groups involved. He then proceeded to compound his mistake by quickly establishing a Decentralisation Implementation Group chaired by Phil Flynn, the former president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and former vice president of Sinn Fein.

McCreevy has since departed to Brussels and Flynn resigned after he was questioned by Gardai investigating a massive IRA money laundering operation in the wake of the Northern Bank robbery.

The departure of the two men centrally involved in the programme should have been the signal to call at least a temporary halt to assess the viability of the scheme. Nothing of the kind happened, however, and the new minister, Brian Cowen, continued on the path set down by McCreevy. After Flynn's departure the respected figure of Finbar Flood, the former chairman of the Labour Court, was appointed to oversee the implementation.

In his latest report, Flood has openly and honestly outlined the problems he is encountering in putting the programme into effect. One of the things he needs to do for the scheme to have any chance of success is to get the unions to agree to allow people to transfer between the civil service and the various state agencies that are being decentralised.

So far the public service unions have offered furious resistance to the move. "Resolution of the outstanding issues is central to the overall implementation process in the state agencies," said the report of Flood's Group, but there is no sign that those issues can be resolved.

In the civil service itself promotions in the departments listed for decentralisation are now being restricted to those who give an undertaking to move. That worked as sufficient incentive for some people to agree to leave Dublin against their better judgement. It did not, however, get over the problem of how to persuade people to move to another location at the same grade.

Finance is now preparing to take the incentive policy one step further by offering promotions far and wide to civil servants who agree to move. There is an obvious danger that willingness to move to a specific town rather than ability will became the criteria for promotion. That policy is a direct threat to the quality of administration in the civil service.

When it comes to the professional grades, though, even that kind of incentive scheme won't work. If professional staff refuse to go then there is no way out of the problem.

Meanwhile, the Office of Public Works is gaily going about the business of building or refurbishing office space for decentralisation. A total of 14 new offices will be ready in 2007,12 more in 2008 and 15 in 2009. Properties have been identified for all of the transfers due by the end of next year.

Both parties in government appear equally committed to the madness and there seems little chance that there will be any change of heart before the next election. What has been surprising though is that opposition parties have not zoned in much more strongly on the issue as one that epitomises government incompetence and waste.

Competence is going to be one of the key issues at the next election and decentralisation represents the pinnacle of the government's failure on this front. Fine Gael and Labour have criticised aspects of the scheme but they seem reluctant to alienate voters in the towns earmarked for decentralisation by committing themselves to calling it off, at least in its current guise. It is precisely this kind of political fudge that must raise questions about whether opposition parties have the courage required to take over the reins of government.

A GOVERNMENT plan to computerise forestry data trebled in cost from €5.3m to over €15m and took five times longer than anticipated, according to a report published by the Public Accounts Committee yesterday.

Speaking at the launch the PAC chairman, Fine Gael's Michael Noonan, said the case was a "pilot" study on the extent to which decentralisation can end up costing huge amounts of money and creating new difficulties if not properly managed.

According to Mr Noonan, the PAC discovered that one of the major factors in the trebling of the costs and the huge time-lag was a decision to transfer the forestry service from the Department of Agriculture to the Department of Marine and Natural Resources in 1997 and the subsequent decision to decentralise that division to Wexford in 1998.

The report found that moving the forestry division from one department to another resulted in the loss of a well-resourced and experienced technology division, with the new department having fewer than four full-time staff available and no experience of systems development.

That was then compounded by the decentralisation transfer that resulted in the loss of experienced staff with a turnover of 90pc in administrative staff.

According to the PAC report, an independent review of the project was undertaken in 2000 and that found that there was not sufficient support for the team in the forestry service.

"There was a recognition, at the highest level, that the project had gone badly wrong and a determination to find out how that happened.

The outcome of that review was a painful lesson for the Department. There are now more than 60 people in the information systems division, including more than 40 specialists," the PAC reported noted.

When the project commenced in 1997 its estimated cost was €5.3m and the classification of forests was expected to take over 11 months.

The PAC discovered that up to 2002 the overall cost was €9.2m and when staff and other technology costs were included the final cost was about €15m, a 300pc increase on the original estimate.

Instead of the project taking 11 months, the classification of forests took 53 months, five times longer than intended.

Likewise, the time allocated for the soils analysis project was 36 months but it has already taken 77 months and it is still not complete.

In explaining the cost overruns and delays to the PAC the Department said one of the main reasons was that key people had been transferred and 90pc of the administrative staff brought in was completely new to this area.

Mr Noonan said this particular project highlighted the potential dangers of losing staff with specialist skills in decentralisation moves.

He said it appeared there was a big focus on the property side of decentralisation, getting rid of existing properties and acquiring new ones, without sufficient focus on ensuring that proper staffing plans are put in place.

In its recommendations the PAC warned that the importance of "maintaining key resource and skill levels on decentralisation cannot be over emphasised.

The lessons learnt in this case should be applied to the implementation of the current decentralisation programme."

The PAC acknowledged that despite the additional costs, the computerisation programme for forestry had yielded benefits.

Brian Dowling
Political Correspondent

Following consultation with Departments and Offices, the Department of Finance developed a protocol for addressing any ICT staff losses that may occur during decentralisation. This protocol suggests that organisations should, when filling decentralising ICT posts, follow a sequence that includes CAF transfers initially, followed by promotion competitions, followed by external recruitment in the event of shortfalls still existing. The protocol would allow non-IT personnel to apply for decentralising ICT posts subject to successful completion of an ICT recruitment process that includes aptitude testing, interviewing and certified ICT training.

NewDubliner wrote:

Don't worry, the Department of Finance now has a 'protocol' which will manage the replacement of all IT staff by non-Dubliners. It works something like this:

1: Look for volunteers who are prepared to move at their own expense.
2: If nobody volunteers, offer promotions.
3: If that doesn't work, recruit at commercial rates.

So, why volunteer?