Public-service reform vital for future economic growth: ThePost.ie


TCH Archives > Sunday Business Post > 2007/01/07 > Public-service reform vital for future economic growth

Public-service reform vital for future economic growth
Sunday, January 07, 2007 - By Taoiseach Bertie Ahern
As the new year begins, it is clear that the public service will continue to make an important contribution to meeting the challenges and opportunities that face us as a country.

To help maximise this contribution, I am inviting the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to undertake a major review of our public service.

This will be the first review of its kind undertaken by the OECD in terms of its scope. Of course, many stand-alone reviews have been undertaken over the years of different parts and aspects of the public service in Ireland. However, this review will examine the whole public service.

There will be a particular emphasis on how the various parts relate to each other, including the civil service, particular sectors such as local government, health and education, as well as agencies. The OECD will tell us how the Irish public service compares with the best in the world and it will make recommendations on future directions for reform.

There may be some stark messages for us arising from this review, but we should be prepared for them and be prepared to make the hard decisions that reforms often require.

The public service plays an important role in shaping our economy and society. It is vital that the public service fulfils this role into the future, but that it does so in the most effective and efficient way possible.

Over the past ten years, our public services have been expanded, improved and reformed, and this work continues apace.

More doctors, teachers and gardai are employed than ever before. These areas represent the ‘coal face’ in public service terms: where the real value lies. The extra teachers, nurses and gardai are making an impact.

Significant service improvements have been made and the direct experience of many people with the public service is good - with some obvious exceptions in pressurised areas. But we need further reform. The delivery channels must be improved and my government colleagues and I are determined that they will be freed up and made more effective. This is where the OECD comes in.

We want the OECD to examine rigorously the connections between the investment decisions that are being made around the cabinet table in government buildings and delivery on the ground around the country, in the key areas of services and infrastructure affecting ordinary people.

I am looking to the OECD, as a highly-respected international expert body, to provide us with appropriate recommendations based on best practice from other countries, including delivery with the private and not-for-profit sectors.

We want the OECD to examine how government priorities and decisions are translated into services and outcomes for citizens, and how these processes can be improved. In short, I want our public service to be genuinely world class and ‘fit for purpose’ to meet the needs of all our citizens.

A lot of change has taken place already in areas of financial management, human resources management, regulatory reforms, e-government initiatives and customer service delivery mechanisms.

But we need to show delivery on the ground, to highlight what is working, what is not and to help us make more informed choices about where to allocate resources.

While the OECD review will be looking at how our public service system as a whole operates, there are three other developments that will be brought forward this year. First, individual departments and agencies should be able to demonstrate their own performance and capacities - in effect, they should undergo an ‘organisational health check’.

This would complement existing external review and accountability mechanisms applied by the Oireachtas, the Comptroller and Auditor General, expenditure reviews and so on.

Accordingly, a template is being developed and will be piloted for this kind of health check in the coming months. This will involve peer review by senior public service managers, but will also draw on expertise from business, academic experts and other stakeholders.

The second area in which there will be progress is a new leadership initiative for the whole public service. Change and reform require leadership at the political level, but also leadership within the public service. I want the public service to continue to be led by people with the right skills and capacities to serve the needs of all our citizens.

That means encouraging and enabling career development across the wider public service. It means encouraging greater interaction and mobility with the private sector. It also means breaking down internal barriers to the selection and deployment of the best people for the job.

In short, it means ensuring that we have the best people leading our public service in the years to come, from a variety of backgrounds and with different skill sets.

Finally, I believe that we need to be able to measure how the public service is doing.

I am certain that the public service is better now than it was when I first entered public life in the 1970s, but it is sometimes difficult to prove it. A lot of work is being done, particularly as part of the budget process, to develop appropriate and useful indicators of performance.

My colleague, Minister for Finance Brian Cowen, is leading the way on this by asking government departments and offices to produce more detailed performance information in the form of annual output statements. Better measurement is a challenge for us collectively, particularly as we need indicators to show not just the progress achieved by individual organisations, agencies or programmes, but the progress of these combined.

The expectations of all our citizens are, quite correctly, very high when it comes to the public service. A key challenge for the public service is to continue to justify public confidence in its ability to deliver. I know that public servants are themselves anxious for reform and have already shown a strong appetite for change.

The initiatives I am taking will be led by the secretary general to the government.

He and his colleagues will draw on the expertise of many outside the public service who can contribute to continuing change. We should be prepared for the key messages that will come out of the OECD’s work this year and we will ensure renewed vigour in our efforts to change, modernise and improve the Irish public service.