John Collison: Government-by-Agency corner

[letitroll]

Ministers have been "managers of technocrats " since, I don't know, about 1920 in all developed countries.

Should have been more precise with my language...yes Ministers managing technocrats is the natural order of things.....the point Collinson and I guess I am making is now technocrats and agencies containing technocrats are managing Ministers.....the tail is wagging the dog.

the public sector treat the long term as a theoretical concept like the mathematical concept of infinity ∞, a very very large number that can never be reached but is needed for mathematical formulas to work.

Yep - I've dealt with and observed government agencies up close and I've had friends come out of these guangos and agencies at a very senior level and confirm my basic heuristic....which is the leadership/executive committees inside these agencies/regulatory bodies have remarkable sameness to them:

(1) the dominant impulse is chiefly institutional self-preservation—maintaining and, where possible, enhancing the agency or quangos budget, scope, and status within the governmental ecosystem. It's the first and only real rule of quango fight club.
(2) secondarily they are concerned with carrying out the very narrow remit of their agency to ensure no blame ever comes their way always remembering it is the best way to ensure Rule No.1 above is best served
(3) they may, if (1) and (2) are satisfied think about the wider context of their decisions or 'strong' recommendations to the Minister but only when the countries interest aligns with the self-preservation rule and its derivative rule no.2.

Agencies and quangos, are a dangerous thing, they become mini-States within States....little semi-autonomous fiefdoms with self-preservation instincts that you wouldn't believe.....that understand all too well how to manage the 'parent' department and the Minister (temporarily) sitting at the top of that Department....flattery, coercion, fear mongering, technocrats blinding civil service bureaucrats with manufactured complexity & narratives designed perfectly and purposefully to spook civil servants into various courses of action (or in-action as might be the case)....I've seen and heard versions of them all.

 

[TomEdison]

Should have been more precise with my language...yes Ministers managing technocrats is the natural order of things.....the point Collinson and I guess I am making is now technocrats and agencies containing technocrats are managing Ministers.....the tail is wagging the dog

I don't think that's the issue. It's up to the Minister, obviously, how much reliance he places on the advice offered by his department, and how much he just does what he wants. The issue that Collison is pointing to is not Ministers deferring to their advisers; it's the growth of structures and systems in which decisions are no longer made by ministers — e.g., as mentioned before, the power of deciding planning appeals being removed from the Minister for Local Government and given to An Bord Pleanala instead.

 

[SnowdaisyBell]

It's an anti-environment rant.

This!
Can't believe how the majority of people seem to not see this.
According to newspapers Collisson spoke to Micheal Martin before that article came out and the leader of the country was complaining to him about red tape.
Lo and behold this collisson article appears ranting vaguely about 'red tape'.

The article was a set up to give the govt a chance to respond about oh look this is great let's cut the red tape.
A lot of red tape is environmental and heritage protections that were hard fought!
And our environment is still struggling.

It straight out of the Tory playbook, diverting attention from the real story, and look where that got the uk...

Not saying we couldn't tidy up a few areas but part of the Ireland is broken ranting is cover for bringing in change in a rushed / underhand way, and
I don't like a billionaire/ Collisson being used or given such a platform in such a shady way.

 

[nest egg]

I see politicians are getting in on the act now. While dressed up as a 'FF has stopped delivering', the points could apply to any party who's been in power of late, and the issues/causes highlighted similar to Collision's piece.

"as politicians, we have simply allowed the State to grow (and public expenditure to increase by 90 per cent since 2015) and things are not getting done."

One of things drilled into me when I first started my career was that it's poor form to criticise something you don't have a better solution for.

The question remains to both articles, what exactly is the solution to the problem they've highlighted?

Opinion: The Fianna Fáil I joined was the party that got things done. What happened to us?

Presidential election debacle will soon fade but not delivering urgently on matters impacting people’s lives will not

www.irishtimes.com

 

[Purple]

The question remains to both articles, what exactly is the solution to the problem they've highlighted?

There is no exact solution but there is a solution. That is a policy change which brings real power and real decision making back to the elected representatives of the people.

 

[nest egg]

There is no exact solution but there is a solution. That is a policy change which brings real power and real decision making back to the elected representatives of the people

Policy is one thing, dismantling quangos & taking power back is quite another. Collision mentioned the number of new bodies which have been setup of late. There are too many vested interests who will want to maintain the status quo at this point. Unless anyone wants to try inviting Elon & his chainsaw over to see how that goes!?

 

[ClubMan]

Unless anyone wants to try inviting Elon & his chainsaw over to see how that goes!?

The HSA might have something to say about someone waving a chainsaw around the office...

 

[joe sod]

as politicians, we have simply allowed the State to grow (and public expenditure to increase by 90 per cent since 2015) and things are not getting done."

One of things drilled into me when I first started my career was that it's poor form to criticise something you don't have a better solution for.

Well if the solution back in 2015 was to add more bureaucracy, regulations etc and that is not now delivering well then that needs to change.
Someone else said oh if we reduce all the bureaucracy associated with environmental stuff, the environment will deteriorate further. Completely disagree, the money should be spent on hard environmental infrastructure like sewage, water works etc not on bureaucracy. The government has admitted as much because it wants the private sector to build the water infrastructure because their semi states and public bodies are not able to do it despite spending a fortune on it.

 

[SnowdaisyBell]

The point was not 'if we reduce all the bureaucracy associated with environmental stuff, the environment will deteriorate further'. The main point is that the legislation and policy in place (many EU requirements cos we couldn't be trusted to do it ourselves) is what is being inaccurately blamed as the only cause of 'delays' to development when it's mostly due to govt under funding / under resourcing the systems in place to ensure the environment is protected as a standard part of development.
Not staffing their own planning system to deal with applications in a timely manner etc.
This is classic Tory style - under fund it so it struggles to deliver then point at it's struggle as a 'problem that needs abolishing' to free up development, so obvious and not convincing!

 

[Purple]

The point was not 'if we reduce all the bureaucracy associated with environmental stuff, the environment will deteriorate further'. The main point is that the legislation and policy in place (many EU requirements cos we couldn't be trusted to do it ourselves) is what is being inaccurately blamed as the only cause of 'delays' to development when it's mostly due to govt under funding / under resourcing the systems in place to ensure the environment is protected as a standard part of development.
Not staffing their own planning system to deal with applications in a timely manner etc.
This is classic Tory style - under fund it so it struggles to deliver then point at it's struggle as a 'problem that needs abolishing' to free up development, so obvious and not convincing!

The budget of the Department of the environment has increased 250% in the last 10 years. That's from €400 million to just under €1 billion
The budget of the Department of Housing, Heritage and Local Government has increased from €1.24 billion in 2015 to €9.29 billion this year. That's a 750% increase. Source
Are you saying that those increases are the result of classic Tory style policies?
How much more do they need in order to not be under funded?

 

[TomEdison]

While these are good points, what really matters here is not how much overall the Department spends. The vast bulk of their spending is the cost of the various programmes that they administer. But in terms of the efficiency and effectiveness of the Department's own processes, what matters is not how much the Department is spending overall, but what resources its devoting to its own processes. Do they have the staff, the IT systems, etc that they need to work effectively and efficiently? You can't tell this just from looking at the size of the overall budget.

There's a tension here, because the more of its overall budget that the department is spending on its own staff, its IT systems, its administration, etc, the less efficient it is seen to be. But the less it spends on these things, the less efficient it actually is. Somewhere in the middle there's a sweet spot where the department is spending enough on staff and systems to do its job in a satisfactory way, but not more than that. Looking from outside, it's very hard to know where that sweet spot lies.

The stereotypical "Tory style" response to this problem is privatisation. Let the discipline of the market find the sweet spot! So services are privatised or, if that can't be done, the administration of the services is contracted out. If that can't be done, consultants are brought in to reorganise the agency. In practice, the efficiency dividend acheived by these methods is mixed — at best.

 

[Purple]

Do they have the staff, the IT systems, etc that they need to work effectively and efficiently? You can't tell this just from looking at the size of the overall budget.

If the systems and processes are inefficient, if there are too many layers, if there is a lack of accountability and people can't be meaningfully sanctioned etc then if doesn't matter if they have the Staff, IT systems etc. An inefficient system is inefficient. It doesn't matter how well run it is within the confines of that system.

If, for example, the decision making chain in a Department has three people in it 20 years ago and each had to complete reports with a pen and meet in person then using IT (electronic forms, emails, Teams etc) would make that more efficient. But if there are now 16 people in the decision making chain then it will be less efficient and more expensive now matter how good the IT systems are. The solution isn't better IT, the solution is the removal of at least 10 of those people from the decision making chain. Then there are fewer employees, fewer offices, fewer employees looking after offices and fewer people in HR, fewer managers managing the people in HR and Admin and Building Services etc and more money for the Department to spend on those projects that now happen faster and so cost less.

I don't care is the State delivers services directly or subcontracts them to the private sector. I' don't care in our health service is publicly or privately delivered (it's overwhelmingly privately delivered now). I don't care if by bin is collected by a council employee or a private contractor. I just want the best outcome for the citizens of this country.