WRITING here today, Thom Ogier’s Inside Politics piece is likely to strike a raw nerve with many in the public sector when he says that we have failed to sacrifice so many costly sacred cows because civil service managers are not up to the job.
Before the rapidly expanding executive classes – now joined by ‘directors of…’ – splutter into their mid-morning cappuccinos and instruct their equally expanding PAs and executive secretaries to dial the Press Complaints Commission, it is clear that Ogier has a point.
The States of Guernsey has never really believed in value for money. That is why it does not have an auditor general or any concept of performance-related pay.
Elsewhere, audit functions hold governments to account for the way they use public money. They provide support, by helping public service managers improve performance. They also safeguard the interests of citizens who, as taxpayers, are responsible for paying for public services and the salaries underpinning them. And they also champion the interests of citizens as users of public services.
Where on earth does that happen in Guernsey?
In practice, most senior department staff have built their careers during the times, as identified by Tribal Helm, when reckless extravagance was the order of the day.
The notion of doing more with less is anathema and, as the Health and Social Services Department classically demonstrates, doing about the same with a great deal more money please, is where all departments want to be.
In the real world, a finance director and chief executive who announced that they intended to call on shareholders to make up an as yet to happen multi-million pound loss, as HSSD has done, would not be in place.
Neither, without some very deft footwork and restorative action, would the chairman.
Yet in HSSD’s case, the minister positively champions relieving the taxpayer of up to an extra £190 a head – and to hell with them and the rest of government also fighting for funds.
And, inexplicably, this is seen as acceptable.
If the public sector and its politicians wish to earn respect it will be by demonstrating they are up to the task – and not by spending their way out with other people’s money.