Canberra PS tied to the whipping post again...

Interesting theories.

the APS is useless at contracts though, and this costs a fortune all the time. Currently our advertising contract was redone, in order to save money… Only somehow, we now have to pay the ad firm to ‘train’ our people in how to use their system. (instead of just paying them to do the work). We also have to pay to do this everytime they change or update their system.Which I think we also pay for…. They seem to be holding all the cards here.

I dont’ know who negotiates these govt contracts, but they seem to always have loopholes you could drive a truck through, and always cost twice as much as intended.

That makes no sense sexynotsmart, why if outsourcing projects would one need to retain more managers within the APS than less?

That is the biggest furphy – competing with the private sector for remuneration. Project management is not rocket science – any good APS6/EL1 can do it, particularly if it is an oversight role of the private sector.

There is no enslaved proletariat in Canberra – last time I looked it was very middle class with middle class perceptions.

SES has ‘ballooned’ because the APS is responsible for a bigger spend, and more is outsourced these days. A typical project that may have been done by an SES, a couple of ELs and a few dozen APS staff is now an SES, a couple of ELs and several million-dollar contracts.

APS has to compete for good contract managers with the private sector. That means commensurate remuneration.

Unfortunately this nuance is lost on the enslaved proletariat, so look forward to more populist grifting in the coming months.

Trouble is they always cut back in the wrong areas. The first jobs to go are the actual ‘doing’ jobs, customer service and frontline staff. Very little cuts are made at the top where even the Fed Gov admits the SES has ballooned for no good reason. The politicians make these decisions but then leave it to the career bureacrats to make the cuts and guess what it…it becomes about protecting jobs for the boys/girls.

The actual jobs that affect everyday people – the public – who want more service not less all get excited about possible cuts to the PS but then complain about lack of service, phone queues, call centre delays, physical queues in offices or why no-one has answered their letters.

Electorally popular in theory but in reality actually causes more problems.

Anna Key said :

Give the libs some credit. Short of ideas so lets kick the PS and highlight asylum seekers (even though more illegals probably come through Sydney each day on a plane from UK/Ireland). I assume the unemployed and single mums will be next

Ah yes, but the ones coming by plane happen to be conveniently white, so they’re ok.

I didn’t hear Joe complaining his department was too large when he was in government. I can imagine it now:

“Where’s my brief?”
“Sorry, big guy – we’re all out door knocking to find jobs for the unemployed.”

Al – honestly – before you lived in Canberra, did you think cutting back the Federal Public Service was probably a good idea?

Give the libs some credit. Short of ideas so lets kick the PS and highlight asylum seekers (even though more illegals probably come through Sydney each day on a plane from UK/Ireland). I assume the unemployed and single mums will be next

I particularly liked Hockey’s sound bite this morning;

“There are 5,000 people in the Department of Health in Canberra and they don’t treat one patient. There’s 5,000 people in the Department of Education and they don’t teach one pupil.”

Yeah… and?

And to echo, Yes.