Why is AGIMO implementing Gershon word-by-word when the 'world has changed'?

peterh said :

there were several clangers that the report highlighted as good ideas.

the one thing that I saw as the ultimate was the reintroduction of panel period contracts.

the last time this was implemented, the labor party was in power. didn’t work then, won’t work now.

but lets waste money trying, hey?

It gives the impression of progress.

there were several clangers that the report highlighted as good ideas.

the one thing that I saw as the ultimate was the reintroduction of panel period contracts.

the last time this was implemented, the labor party was in power. didn’t work then, won’t work now.

but lets waste money trying, hey?

eyeLikeCarrots said :

Some of the reccomendations need to be examined. Being someone who has come to Canberra to give the APS a go, the distinct lack of a defined career path is telling me I should have stayed in the higher education IT sector.

The report has some stuff about this but I am not holding my breath that it will change anything.

What sort of career path were you hoping to find?

In APS IT it tends to be techy–>manager if you want to make more money and stay permanent. Very few highly paid permanent tech jobs around.

I doubt that the Gershon report will achieve much either.

realityskin: yes, because govt projects never run late or suffer scope creep.

This contractor vs permanent vs consultant merry go round tends to do a revolution every three or four years. Contractors become permanent employees of outsourcers or integrators who then place the contractors in projects for a year or five. When individual contracts become popular again (and they will), people leave companies to become contractors. APS go from APS to companies, and occasionally (although not often) to contracts.

Every freshly minted band 1 SES thinks they can break the cycle and save money, but it never seems to stick.

The crazy long recruitment processes for ongoing APS jobs is so un-necessary. They could do it in a few weeks if they wanted to. For some reason they let it drag on, while the file rots in someone’s in tray, and they never seem to grasp that this costs them people. Many don’t bother applying from outside becauase the long difficult process is too much of a barrier. And I’m sad to see many Dep’ts still cleaving to the pointless “address the selection criteria” ritual.

The whole mindset of contracting will change in the next two years, it will be a tough gig. They are bringing in a Gov wide policy of project work only, and once the project is over you are finished, you can’t move to another project, you will have to reapply.

Some of the reccomendations need to be examined. Being someone who has come to Canberra to give the APS a go, the distinct lack of a defined career path is telling me I should have stayed in the higher education IT sector.

The report has some stuff about this but I am not holding my breath that it will change anything.

getting rid of contractors may save you dollars but leaves the work to the utterly useless deadwood left in the public service. those that have been around for 20 years yet dont know a dam thing about the technology they are supposed to develop or support
so sooner or later, the contractors come back, at a higher rate, and finish the job that was left for the pubes to finish(which will never be completed)

imo if you got rid of the 12 or so retards i work with and got 4 contractors at around my rate(which isnt exorbitant) your cost base would be the same but you would actually get results

/runs away from eggs been thrown from brain dead pubes

My understanding is that quite a few contractors were put on in order to circumvent the lengthy (9-12 months + clearance) recruitment process for APS. I know several who, in the current climate, are dying for the security of permanent roles, but have had to find alternate employment pending the outcome of the selection process.

gomer said :

…Parts of the Gershon Review that I have read are no brainers for example getting permanent staff instead of expensive contractors for BAU work.

Don’t you think that IT managers would already have done this if it were possible? This stuff has been talked about for the last 25-30 years that contracting has been popular.

Skilled permanent employees doing BAU work tend to want more money the longer they stay in the job, same as in every other vocation. If they can’t get it, they move on. If they can get it, they end up getting paid about the same as a contractor. Then some hotshot manager type with some accounting quals wants to make his bones, so he gets the bright idea of cutting AWAs, overtime (which BAU people do a *LOT* of), and oncall restriction allowances. Result is a lot of disaffected, highly skilled and valuable BAU people, who then move on.

Getting permanents to replace contractors is easily said, and there are consultants and managers who make a very good living out of saying it. But it’s very hard to do, because it is still a sellers market for very skilled IT people.