There is certainly inefficiency in the public service. As long as you don’t actually wedgie the CEO, you probably wont be fired. This hardly gives an incentive to bust a gut. However, on the whole I doubt the public service has less talent or drive than most parts of the private sector. There are certainly more than a few wastes of oxygen in both, but I think the public sector also has plenty of very talented and driven people.
I tend to think that the public service gets the sharp end of the stick in a number of ways.
Firstly, the public service has to do all the difficult things that aren’t profitable, and which the private sector doesn’t want to do. Incarcerating violent criminals; deciding who is a valuable immigrant and not a fraudster or worse; deciding whether a child abuse allegation is a mere fabrication or an urgent warning. All these things are tricky, especially without the benefit of hindsight. When private sector firms get involved in these things, I doubt they are any less inclined to stuffs ups (Chubb’s prisoner transport record is a fine example). This also means that when a government department is involved in something that goes wrong, it tends to be something that will make a juicy story on Close Up.
Further, often whatever departments do, they will cop it in the neck. If CYPFS remove a child from its parents’ care, they are suddenly ogres ripping families apart. If they ignore a warning, and leave a family together, they will be blamed if somethings goes wrong. If immigration tightens entry controls, the left brand them xenophobic. If they relax controls, the right brand them bleeding heart liberals. I always had a particular theory about this. It always seemed to me that people in NZ are somewhat suspicious of immigrants as a group, so it is easy to make mileage with anti-immigration rhetoric. However, when shown the story of an individual immigrant, kiwis will be much more kind hearted. This leads to a lot of strange and contradictory attitudes to immigration.
Other problems for the civil service are created by our political system. The opposition are constantly on the look out for slip ups. In practice, that makes civil servants fairly risk averse. Often the first imperative in government is a negative one: to avoid messing up, and ending up getting chewed out by the boss, or worse, the minister. Now I am not saying the opposition should not be vigilant, but it does create certain perverse incentives.
Also, the Privacy Act means that even when a person goes public with their supposed tale of woe at the hands of some civil servant, the department in question is effectiviely unable to defend itself, even against attacks as vicious as a Dave Dobbyn music video.
If any of the assorted civil servants out there want to comment, I would be interested to hear what you have to say, but remember to be careful, you wouldnt want to breach your code of conduct!
Update: I heard a story yesterday which i think illustrates my point nicely. A friend who works for a major NZ retail chain had taken part in designing a catalogue for the company. it was part of the way through printing when the CEO decided he didnt like the colours. So, they stopped printing, redesigned it, and rep-printed the catalgoue. $75,000 of catalogues had already been printed. If a public sector entity had done something comparable, there would have been an uproar, but because this was a private sector firm, noone even hears about it. Now, obviously public money has levels of accountability that private money doesn't. That is inevitable. However, I think this shows that the private sector is not necessarily more efficient than the public sector, it is just less accountable.
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