12 June 2009

Stanhopian tantrum over questions

| johnboy
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The ABC had an interesting story yesterday on Chief Minister Stanhope’s anger in the face of 2,550 questions on notice lodged by the Greens and Liberals in the course of the estimates hearings.

The Chief Minister says it’s going to cost $1.5 million to answer all the questions.

The examples I’ve heard him use (yet to see a statement on this from his office) in interviews have included questions about the cost of green paint and money spent on temporary footpath repairs.

My question would be what sort of system are they running where these questions are difficult to answer? How on earth can you responsibly decide to undertake these actions without already having numbers on projected cost and performance against budget?

UPDATE: Brendan Smyth is very excited by more cracks appearing in the Labor facade and John Hargreaves thoughts on the quality of questions:

    ‘It’s not so that the questions in fact were trivial, I believe, I think they were quite reasonable questions. (ABC 666 12/6/2009).

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Not wondering any more, that’s for sure!

Woody Mann-Caruso6:53 pm 14 Jun 09

Makes me wonder whether that regular work is actually needed or effective.

Just another day for you, I guess – wondering about stuff you know nothing about, then posting about it online.

Hells_Bells746:10 pm 14 Jun 09

oops I just finished telling my bf in a forum posting to use his i before e except after c rule and I just stuffed that one hehe .. receivables* and consignment*.

Promised myself I would stop double posting like a dick too. OOPS! Sorry!

Hells_Bells746:06 pm 14 Jun 09

Oh, like the auditors at CIT. I was in charge of the rollbooks and files in 7 faculties we looked after among so much else and phones for constant enquiries, reception, bookings, accounts payable and recievable on cosignment from the Regional shop and none of that work mattered when the auditors were coming. Oh, the damn panic when it reached the bosses level. They DO NOT understand or take no for an answer (I only needed to try once, wasn’t game for a rematch). So I could imagine how unsettling these things would be in most departments. But as someone said, all part and parcel. Me and the auditors were like that *crosses fingers* 😉

Gungahlin Al10:43 am 14 Jun 09

A final thought: keeping accurate records (you know – the filing? As in NOT in your personal Inbox), and being able to provide that information to whomever asks for it (estimates, govt, public, FOI) is part and parcel of working in government. If it wasn’t we’d be in it deep as a country/democracy.

I’d suggest if it burns someone up too much to deal with that simple fact, than they are in the wrong job.

#45 WMC – I agree that scenario is more likely than not, however, it need not be if the place had its act together with its systems and processes.

The fact that they get 2.5k questions on notice probably also says something about the quality of the briefing that was done by the departments for estimates. I know when I was in the circus we’d spend days pulling together briefings on just about everything we could think of that was likely to be topical and asked about by the committee. Clearly in these estimates the briefs were either lacking or not taken in, or the questions totally out of left field. The latter is always going to happen, but not thousands of questions worth … unless the people answering questions were woefully unprepared and not across their budgets.

Also, I think Stanhope is playing with figures to get to his 2,550 questions. I think Smyth and Hunter claimed on the radio it was more like 500-700, but some were multipart questions, ie is it the case that xxxx? if so, yyyyy? In that case, its likely the same piece of work provides the answer to several questions, and the total workload is not as big as Stanhope is attempting to portray.

Boo hoo. Some public servants have to think about what they do and what it costs. My heart bleeds. And a whole branch shuts down while the questions are being answered, meaning that their regular “work” is not getting done, eh? Makes me wonder whether that regular work is actually needed or effective.

What GA said.

Plus estimates is the only time the government actually has to answer the questions. In questions time, government MLAs just tend to fob off any questions and answer with spin.

Gungahlin Al5:57 am 14 Jun 09

I don’t like the way the Libs are playing opposition for its own sake either, rather than getting on being a part of the parliament. And I think this is Stanhope’s way of trying to tar the Greens by bundling it all together with the Lib’s games.

But that’s the cost of democracy. Would you prefer we went back to what we had last term when they had a majority and just said get stuffed?

And as I said before, if they didn’t put a serious effort into estimates, and something serious went unnoticed, then everyone would be baying for blood. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t…

Woody Mann-Caruso12:07 am 14 Jun 09

in the case of the cost of green paint, I’d have thought it fairly simple to find out.

Let’s say it is as simple as you say, and they’re all that simple. That’s 2,550 lots of ‘a couple of hours work’, or about 5,000 hours. A public servant works 1,725 hours in a whole year (46 weeks a year, 37.5 hours a week, no sick leave). So already this ‘relatively simple’ job is worth the same amount of time as taking two or three APS staff for a whole year. We’re already up to a quarter of a million in costs, and we haven’t involved any senior public servants at all yet, or factored in the time of the people these mythical APS3s have to talk to.

But of course, it’s not even that simple.

“Hello, Roads? It’s Budget. I need to talk to somebody about paint.”
“What?”
“Who would I talk to about finding out how much the paint for Project X cost?”
“I have no idea. Can I get back to you?”
(Two days later)
“Well, that was Bob, but he left…I’ll find out who has the info now and get back to you…”
“I need this info quickly.”
“Yeah, well we all have real jobs to do as well.”
(Three days later)
“Phil thinks he might be able to help you, but he’s on training this week – can he call you next Wednesday?”
(the following week)
“I know how much they bought from the file, but we’re not sure how much they used – some of it went to Project Z, and there’s 1500 liters in storage…”

Repeat ad nauseum for all 2,550 questions and you’re easily getting to the $1.5m quoted by the CM.

My branch grinds to a halt in the week leading up to Estimates. A whole branch. A whole week. Fifty grand in productivity down the tube, and we rarely get asked anything. What must it cost a department? The service? All so stupid little boys and girls can use the public service to score points against their equally stupid friends across the chamber.

farnarkler said :

Does anyone know what question 1,786 is? Just curious.

I’ve checked the ACT Parliament website but can’t manage to find any of the questions. Where are they hidden?

Anyway, let’s keep a close watch on question 1,786. What is the question, what is the answer, how long will it take to answer, what will our worthy MPs do with the answer, and was it all worth it?

#42 WMC – in the case of the cost of green paint, I’d have thought it fairly simple to find out. Ask the Roads people in TAMS who the paint supplier is, query the accounts payable system to find out all the invoices from that supplier, dig them out and add them up in a spreadsheet. A couple of hours work for a low level clerk I’d have expected.

Woody Mann-Caruso7:39 pm 13 Jun 09

Costing is not that complicated.

For any ordinary person, your fair estimate would be enough, but these aren’t ordinary people – they’re looking to hurt somebody, and they’ll happily chew you up and sh.t you out to do it. “Would the Senator be satisfied with a ‘fair estimate’ based on ‘reasonable assumptions’? We don’t know an actual figure, but we reckon this is near enough!” doesn’t play well in real life, and setting out your dodgy assumptions makes you look incompetent, particularly when the politician in question is asking for ‘a very detailed answer’. They’re not asking how much a project or a program cost – something you could spit out of any decent finance package – they want to know about _paint_, ffs.

The elected official need only call another area of your department (or even just call you again next session) and get a bunch of different assumptions handed to them to make all of you look like chimps with desks. Alternatively, they could ask “Why did you make that assumption?”, or even better, “Why do you need to make assumptions at all? Why don’t you actually know?” and you’ve got a stuttering, clueless public servant on a pike. You need a Secretary or a Minister with guts to say “P.ss off – we’re not answering that question, because it’s stupid, and you don’t really need to know at all.” I recall Nick Minchin doing this quite often for the Department of Finance when he was minister. Hilarious to watch.

And what dommie said +1.

Lenient said :

I’d be mildly annoyed if someone asked me 2,500 questions.

Happens to parents all the time ….

Hey has anyone noticed that John Hargreaves has been sounding quite sensible and rational lately, and that John Stanhope seems to be keeping a low profile (when he’s not chucking a spack, that is)?

I’d be mildly annoyed if someone asked me 2,500 questions.

I think the green/libs should have to front up to the estimates cmttee to explain why they are asking so many questions.

Before my rise up the ranks of the PS (to now reside in mid-level obscurity), I used to love estimates. Sit for hours on double time, plus meal allowance until the wee hours of the morning. The total bill for us ASO 2-6s would often be far higher than the amounts the senators were questioning

OK, estimates is a way for the PS (departments NOT governments) to be held responsible for their expenditure (appropriate use of taxpayers’ money). The questions are supposed to be based on the department’s annual report, portfolio budget statements and other similar docs. The process has nothing to do with the government in power (be it ALP or Lib), the Minister is only supposed to be at the hearing to make sure that these questions are focused on dept expenditure, not govt!

There is loads of opportunity for the opposition (or anyone else on the estimates committee) to ask their questions ON DEPARTMENTAL EXPENDITURE and the only reason for Qs to be taken on notice is if the depts can’t answer the Qs at the time (i.e don’t have the answers with them) or the committee refuse to accept the answer provided to them. The only other way that Qs are placed on notice is after the hearing, when the committee can decide to ask for questions that they either did not have time to ask on the day of the hearing OR that they would know to be absolutely ridiculous to ask in front of a live audience.
2500 questions on notice gives the impression that the Govt is hiding something (doesn’t it?!) but actually, this means that they are probably asking questions like “how many people are employed to change light bulbs?” and seriously….who would want to know that??

Like it was previously stated, this answer would be written by someone on around a $50,000 salary, be cleared by someone on a $80,000 salary, then cleared by someone else on a $100,000 salary, processed by a Parliamentary area and then sent to anyone else who thinks they need to help out. This is not done for the fun of it but because the Public Service is SOOOOOO accountable to the PUBLIC and tell me any person in the PUBLIC who actually wants the money spent on a fu@king stupid question like that?!?!?!?!

Last of all, state Govts don’t have Senators, only the Fed Govt do so when you are referring to Senators, it probably has nothing to do with the ACT (or any other state govt’s estimates hearings).

And sorry to say, but sh!t…what the hell does the opposition or any other member of the ACT govt have to ask DEPTS in 2500 questions that they can’t ask in Ministers question time (the REAL forum for Govt related questions).

I’ve a view about questions placed on notice during the Estimates process – they should only relate to issues a member raised, or attempted to raise, during the hearings.

If you didn’t bother to show up, or to pursue a particular line of questioning when you did, you miss out.

2500 questions is a joke!

#30 oh, it’s straight after “What does Marcellus Wallace look like?” I believe a gunshot was heard soon after.

Clown Killer10:47 pm 12 Jun 09

This is the ACT Public Service we’re talking about

Exactly it’s not as if they were actually doing somthing.

While the public servants should be delivering services, they’re actually tied to their desks doing non-productive tasks.

Never mind the financial cost, the real penalty is the thousands of hours in writing, approval, rewriting and researching a few sentences to ensure we don’t mislead our elected leaders of the ACT Parliament. All those hours when public servants could be actually doing something useful. This is waste on a massive scale.

This is the ACT Public Service we’re talking about. At least when they’re wasting time answering questions they’re less likely to be screwing up something that actually matters.

farnarkler said :

Does anyone know what question 1,786 is? Just curious.

It is ‘What is the meaning of life?’. I believe the answer is 42.

Jim Jones said :

Cobrico said :

So the health system doesn’t work, the education system doesn’t work …

Um … last time I checked, they worked. They’re not perfect by any stretch, but it’s not like they don’t work or anything.

All depends on your definition and perspective of ‘works’, JJ!

Clown Killer8:51 pm 12 Jun 09

We get the governance we deserve. If Labor are so light on with infoformation on how they’re pissing away our money then it’s probably a fair question. On the other hand, if the opposition are out of their depth and are relying on a grand fishing expedition in the hope of uncovering some dirt then this is a waste of time. As always theres going to be multiple versions of the truth – and qas always none of them are likely to be associated with the operation of the Labor party.

Does anyone know what question 1,786 is? Just curious.

Cobrico said :

So the health system doesn’t work, the education system doesn’t work …

Um … last time I checked, they worked. They’re not perfect by any stretch, but it’s not like they don’t work or anything.

MrMagoo said :

Having been invovled at ACT level and being involved at Federal Levle can I say that 2,500 QoN is ridiculous waste of PS time and resources. Nit picking idiocy from a grup of committee members with nothing else to do.

Magooo give that o back to the grup please.

So the health system doesn’t work, the education system doesn’t work … next time you want to complain about them, think about all those 2550 questions. While the public servants should be delivering services, they’re actually tied to their desks doing non-productive tasks.

Never mind the financial cost, the real penalty is the thousands of hours in writing, approval, rewriting and researching a few sentences to ensure we don’t mislead our elected leaders of the ACT Parliament. All those hours when public servants could be actually doing something useful. This is waste on a massive scale.

I’m certain that the entire Federal Government estimates last month produced fewer questions than this. And while we’re at it, the entire ACT Government lasted two weeks I recall, the same time as the Federal Government section.

It seems the real winner from the last election is self-indulgence and ego-stroking. Not to mention the official sanctioning of waste masquerading under the badge of freedom of information.

weeziepops said :

I am serious, too. Seriously.

Thanks again weeziepops. I am actually talking to a few people to see what I have to do between now and the next election but I think it’s safe to say to say that if I do get in, I won’t be planning on smothering anybody in 2550 questions

I am serious, too. Seriously.

weeziepops said :

I’d vote for you, BerraBoy!

Sorry to double post, but Thanks Wheeziepops. I’m quite serious about it to. I actually think a lot of things in Canberra be can be fixed if we get our priorities right. But that’s for another time…

Clown Killer said :

BerraBoy, I used to love the the ones where you knew exactly what the pollie was fishing for but he haddn’t quite nailed it, there’d be question phrased over 30 or 40 words and we’d just respond with ‘No.’

LOL!

I’d vote for you, BerraBoy!

Clown Killer5:13 pm 12 Jun 09

BerraBoy, I used to love the the ones where you knew exactly what the pollie was fishing for but he haddn’t quite nailed it, there’d be question phrased over 30 or 40 words and we’d just respond with ‘No.’

I worked in the APS for almost 20 years and drafted, and answered, more Questions on Notice, Questions without Notice, QTB’s etc. than I care to remember.

Getting the 2550 questions out of the way is very simple. The relevant Dep’t just drafts a response for their Minister’s signature that states “I am not prepared to authorise the time and resources required to answer this question”. Done. I’ve drafted dozens of these.

While I think the current Gov’t needs to be made more accountable, I’m not sure this is the correct avenue to do so. It seems a tad churlish. Furthermore, what effort would have been expended thinking up each question and over what period of time? Surely, if the Lib’s and Greens have real concerns over any issue then the concern should be raised ASAP, not put aside and sent in as a job-lot in an effort to put pressure on the Gov’t during Estimates. It’s almost as if they don’t want the questions answered. Roll on the next election… I think I’ll have a shot at a seat.

jimbocool said :

Hang on, $1.5 million to answer 2550 questions? 1,500,000/2,550= $588 per question. That’s plainly absurd – surely as good an example as any of the Chief Minister’s shrieking hyperbole.

If you work out the time used by someone to write the answer, someone to clear and amend if need, edit, format on the right form etc., forward to Ministerial section, they stuff about with it for a while…. That’s about right I think.

This level of detail is no more than is commonly asked for on funding applications. If this is too much work, perhaps they could revamp the amount of detail asked for in grant applications.

And when I think of it, they should know how many $ spent of temporary path repairs, how else would they know that it isn’t more cost-effective to do the job properly?

Costing is not that complicated. Even if you make reasonable assumptions about staff time, you should be able to provide at least a fair estimate of what the tax payer’s dollars have been spent on. And before you say anything, Woody, I spent many years in the APS working on finance and budgets so I am not speaking from the perspective of the uninformed.

Woody Mann-Caruso3:54 pm 12 Jun 09

$1.5m for a pad and pen? Maybe he should get the team around and answer the questions, one by one.

Do you have any idea what it’s like in real life to track down expenditure for a single item, or to cost a single activity undertaken by a public servant (as opposed to a project or a program)? To use the example quoted above: how much does it ‘cost’ to process an application? Unless the staff involved have recorded, costed and can report on their time in six minute intervals for every single thing they do, along with exactly who was involved in looking at each bit of an application, there’s no hope. We haven’t even factored in consumables used, like photocopying, printing, phone calls…and would you like to apportion costs for the assets used across the activities as well? How would you like me to do that? Should I mark on this Gantt chart the time I spent making this Gantt chart?

I’ve worked somewhere where we did just this – tracked everything down to 0.1 of a person day before uploading it all into some master system which spat out utter lies about what we did and what it cost. It was a complete waste of time. I had an Excel spreadsheet to make mine up for me when I gave it the total on my flexsheet. I think I worked out once that if everybody was out by 1%, then you multiplied that by the number of people, activities, projects and programs, there was potential for our super accurate ‘system’ to be out by so many squillions of dollars.

Asking these sorts of questions is not democracy. It’s petty fools drunk on power playing childish, spiteful games with your tax dollars.

James-T-Kirk3:38 pm 12 Jun 09

I am happy to answer questions for them at a rate of $38.50 (ex GST)

Hang on, $1.5 million to answer 2550 questions? 1,500,000/2,550= $588 per question. That’s plainly absurd – surely as good an example as any of the Chief Minister’s shrieking hyperbole.

Our local MLAs really do behave like primary school kids sometimes.

Thumper, that statement is offensive to primary school kids!

Funny how Stanhope can so quickly give a cost for answering estimates questions …

While the questions Stanhope gave as examples are trivial in the extreme, that’s almost certainly a smokescreen for sme government unwillingness to answer some other, less trivial questions.

But who will read through 2500 questions (or their answers) to find those interesting few?

Gungahlin Al1:25 pm 12 Jun 09

Getting our levels of government mixed up a bit here I think.

Federal level: Senate estimates can dredge up some very important outcomes from time to time. For instance the resignation of Fitzgibbon stemmed directly from him giving incorrect answers to Estimates. And if something went pearshaped and senators hadn’t been asking about it, then sure as eggs people would be hopping about saying they should have done a better job at keeping the govt’ to account.

ACT level: Mr Stanhope, that is the price of democracy. And if you communicated better with the other members of the ACT Parliament, then they wouldn’t have to put so many questions this way would they? You have a minority government and you need to start including the other MLAs rather than continuing down the adversarial approach that frankly does not serve the community particularly well at all.

Inappropriate1:07 pm 12 Jun 09

Watch a Senate Estimates hearing and you’ll understand his discontent. Sometimes the senators can ask the most inane questions.

amarooresident212:52 pm 12 Jun 09

MrMagoo said :

Having been invovled at ACT level and being involved at Federal Levle can I say that 2,500 QoN is ridiculous waste of PS time and resources. Nit picking idiocy from a grup of committee members with nothing else to do.

Agreed. Especially when the committee member has no intention of actually doing anything with the information.

Having been invovled at ACT level and being involved at Federal Levle can I say that 2,500 QoN is ridiculous waste of PS time and resources. Nit picking idiocy from a grup of committee members with nothing else to do.

I’ve read one of the senate estimates briefings and I’m not surprised there’s so many questions!
Some of the senators asking the questions were complete twits. Most of the time they didn’t appear to be listening to the answers anyway, hence all the questions on notice…

Heffernan especially is an idiot… here’s a snippet:

Senator HEFFERNAN—That is easier to understand than all the other stuff that you were going on about. So you do not have an hourly rate or any real cost recovery of charges.

XXXXX—The fees are the same for each application.

CHAIR—Mr XXXXX has already answered that. It would assist matters if you listened to the answers.

Senator HEFFERNAN—I am hearing the answers. It just seems like a stupid idea.

CHAIR—It does not seem to me that you are listening.

And this probably sums up why there are so many questions on notice:

Senator HEFFERNAN—That is a very good bureaucratic answer, but it does not say anything. I would like these answered in great detail.

XXXXX—I do not think we can give you a response in terms of how long it took to examine that particular application and what the cost was.

Senator HEFFERNAN—Can you come back in great detail, in the required time of the committee, with how much…

Senator Carr—You cannot ask that. The officer has given you an answer.

Senator HEFFERNAN—No. I am putting these on notice, with great respect.

Senator Carr—You can put them on notice if you like, but your answer will not be improved. The answer will say that it has been answered on the day.

$1.5m for a pad and pen? Maybe he should get the team around and answer the questions, one by one.

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