And another thing ... Back to Bhutan

I recently had an article (with Debbie Blackman) published in Public Administration and Development, which looks at civil service reform in Bhutan. Debbie and I visited Bhutan together in 2007 and have both returned (separately) in 2008 to work with civil servants there. Despite the remarkable changes going on in Bhutan in recent times there is remarkably little written on Bhutan's reforms. Part of this probably has to do with limited access but also the fact that most attention in recent times has come from the international infatuation with Gross National Happiness which, I think, tends to be caricatured and not taken seriously as a unique Buddhist-inspired development philosophy. Some have argued GNH is the Bhutanese contribution to Buddhist economics - I didn't even know this existed until I starting writing this article! You can see the abstract here or you can get the whole article from my Crawford School page. Over the next year I will do some writing on service delivery and reform in Bhutan, and perhaps over the next couple join with some colleagues to write a book of reform and democratisation. In the meantime enjoy some of the first published work on public sector reform in Bhutan!

Dole queues, hiring binges, and book contracts!

One area of employment growth has been the recent hiring binge at Centrelink - the Australian government one-stop-shop - as government gears up for a major increase in unemployment numbers. In The Australian this week it was reported that Centrelink had hired 1000 additional staff to handle to deal with the increased demand from those joining the unemployment queue. The call centre has been unable to meet demand from a combination of pressure including rising unemployment, those seeking assistance from recent natural disasters, and people desperately ringing to see when the Rudd government's "stimulus" payment will hit their bank accounts. With latest unemployment figures out tomorrow, maybe we could see some more hiring going on at the service end of government?

In a related development the recent announcement of the tender outcomes for the latest round of employment services contracts has caused outcry to say the least! More than a decade in, the system has had a real shake-up with the latest round of tendering, the first under the Rudd Government. International players have entered the game in Australia and a range of local, non-profit providers, many rated as high performing providers, have lost contracts and will now start adding their own staff to the dole queues. The Job Network, now Job Service Australia, has always been a fascinating experiment with a quasi-market: the previous government dismantled a government organisation which handled job placement for unemployment people and created a market for employment services. Whilst it took a few rounds to settle - a period over which there was a clear reduction in the number of providers as market concentration occurred - an interesting mix of competition, performance management, and attempts to develop longer-term arrangements developed. I wrote a three-part case which set out the history of employment services reform and how performance management developed in the system for the Australia and New Zealand School of Management a couple of years ago - might be time for an update!

Given the uproar over changes, including who lost contracts and why, current sentiment is that there may be a Senate inquiry to investigate the basis for awarding the contracts. Of course, in a "market", quasi as it might be, there is no guarantees of business .......

Busy time ahead for me as I embark on my first major book. Together with John Alford from the Australia New Zealand School of Government, I have a contract with Palgrave Macmillian to write a book on how government works with external parties to deliver public services. Due with the publisher June 2010 looks like John and I will be powering on through 2009-10.

Blogging in the Mother Country

Colin Talbot, an academic from the UK has recently started a blog on Whitehall and Public Management. I met Colin a few years ago at a conference in Nottingham where I was presenting a paper on public value and contracting and we have keep in touch since exchanging papers and thoughts on the topics. He works across a range of public management topics but I found his book The Paradoxical Primate a fabulous read - highly recommended!






Colin has been doing some work in the area of public value - one of my areas of interest - and recently edited a special issue of the International Journal of Public Administration on the topic where I had an article with John Alford, Australia and New Zealand School of Government.

Colin's blog has been an instant success and shows clearly the interest in public management around the world. You can check it out here: http://whitehallwatch.wordpress.com/

Cutting Jobs to Change Culture?

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has announced that it will cut 180 managers, following on from similar level cuts last year. As I have mentioned previously the "efficiency dividend" is challenging many government organisations but in this case it has been startling to hear the cuts are driven, in part, by the opinions of younger staff in the organisation.

The Acting Australian Statistician explained that his decision was guided, in part, by a repeated complaint from younger staff that the "management culture" was a key barrier to innovation and adaptation.

The issue of organisational culture is, to say the least, a controversial one in the academic literature and also in management practice. In practice culture is often cited as a key to organisational success or as a reason why organisations struggle to perform or achieve goals. But what do even mean by culture? Definitions abound, of course, but one of the most interesting debates in the literature on culture (well, from my view anyway) is whether culture is something an organisation has which means management can change it or use it as some form of lever; on the other hand are those that conceive of culture as something an organisation is. Here culture is a more anthropological concept which implies managers cannot do much "to" it. In practice, when we hear of attempts to change culture we often hear about how hard this is, how organisations fail at it, or how "if only we can change the culture" we would be able to do what we really want to.

Whether removing 180 managers will allow for profound cultural change, let's wait and see!

Are Canberrans Really Safe from the Axe?

A recent article in the Canberra Times optimistically reported that Canberra-based public servants were largely safe from the federal government's suspected trimming of the public service. In the 1990s massive cuts occurred to the Commonwealth public service and created major economic problems in the capital (although the resultant property price crash would be welcomed by some in Canberra!). The never-ending 'efficiency dividend' imposed on government agencies has resulted in vacant jobs going unfilled, non-renewal of contractors and the like. But for how long can dividends be delivered using this approach? In combination with the Prime Ministers phenomenal work ethic and his seemingly never-ending demands on public servants to follow his lead has caused a lot of fuss around Canberra (see earlier posts). And, whilst the Territory government might be 'confident' they will be spared the razor gang's cuts, their optimism might be seen in months to come, to be over-inflated.

It's also to believe that cuts won't be made in Canberra in what are mainly policy parts of Departments to enable service expansion around the country when we are getting closer and closer to a dreaded recession. Demand for governments services will clearly increase - something recognised recently by the reconfiguring of rules in the Job Network to enable those made redundant to immediately access job placement and training services - at a cost of almost $300M. When push comes to shove will the government really want to save Canberra, or invest its ever-dwindling funds into services for what will be an increasing pool of unemployed people across the coutry?

Public Servants Fight Back

Today, The Canberra Times carried another article on the issue of workloads for public servants. This is an issue which is unlikely to fade from the radar as the human resource issues bubbling away in the Australian Public Service continue to emerge - high turnover, efficiency dividends, recruitment problems, changes to terms and conditions following the election of Labor, and increasing deamnds from both political masters and the community.

What was interesting about the latest installment in this ongoing issue was the comments by the head of the Australian Public Service Commission, Lynelle Briggs. Briggs was quoted as saying, The cumulative weight of efficiency dividends over the past 20 years or so has been enormous ... and that in combination with only partial funding of salary increases in the public service, together with the things we're asked to absorb, has taken a big toll.''

Briggs argued, ''I think if the Government wants good policy advice with some carefully nuanced perspectives on where to go, then people need time to have a break ... the alternative is that we continue to work at this rate and we get used to it. But if the Government is going to do that they're going to have to pay us more. It's as simple as that.''

The Community and Public Sector Union has mounted similar arguments and is gearing up for a "major campaign" against the government as the combined effects of arbitrary efficiency dividends, increasing demand for services, and downward pressure on salaries looks like creating a very unhealthy work environment indeed.

Kevin Rudd slashes staff bill for MPs

An article in The Australian caught my eye this morning: Kevin Rudd slashes staff bill for MPs.

Australian PM Kevin Rudd has a nickname around Canberra Kevin 24/7 in recognition of the long-hours culture he has bought to the public service. It did not take long for a public spat to emerge between Rudd, the public service and unions as he pushed public servants into longer and longer hours to fit with his working style. Rudd, however, has been unapologetic indicating he had big plans and that public servants had to be prepared to work hard. In terms of people management issues, it is not hard to predict the short-medium terms impacts here - higher turnover, burn-out, sliding morale and so on. It is hard to imagine that many will be happy to see this become a permanent approach to work in the public sector, especially given the focus in recent years on work-life balance.

Today's article was focused on MPs staff and showed that here too he getting more for his money: "Kevin Rudd has slashed the cost of hiring staff for politicians by $5 million a month since taking office and has met his promise to cut ministerial staff by30 per cent". Questions are being raised, however about the quality of work that might come from a reduction in the number of advisers and increasing demands on them.

Earlier this year Dr Maria Maley from the School of Social Sciences at ANU did an interesting seminar in the ANU Political Science Program looking at the roles and activities of ministerial advisers. In identifying the distinctive roles that advisers play, Maria's work is reminiscent of Mintzberg's work which followed managers to find out what it was they actually did.

It will be interesting to see what the effect of Kevin 24/7 will have on both advisers and the public service over the next few years!