A more efficient public sector
February 18th, 2009 at 10:38 am by David FarrarSome people regard this as bad news:
The Ministry of Social Development aims to cut its staff of 9500 by 5 per cent (475) over the next four years by automating some processes and allowing people to apply for some benefits online.
I regard that as very good news.
If we want to lift wages for everyone, then you do it through productivity gains, and online automated processes are one of those ways. And a 5% reduction over four years is pretty modest – I doubt anyone will lose their job – just that some vacancies do not get filled.
Related posts:
- A smaller public sector
- Public Sector Pay Rates
- The national interest in making the ports more efficient
- The state sector
February 18th, 2009 at 10:43 am
WTF does a “Ministry of Social Development” DO for the country, and how much worse off than us were our grandparents, for not having one at all?
In fact, it is probably more a case of the country being one heck of a lot worse off for all the evil social engineering plots hatched by the faceless cultural quislings that infest such an organisation.
Vote:February 18th, 2009 at 10:43 am
I would reduce staff numbers by 9500 in four days
Vote:February 18th, 2009 at 10:46 am
No this is not possible. Greater efficiency and productively at the expense of peoples jobs. That is not the ethic of the Public Service.
Vote:February 18th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
“How to Solve Economic Crisis in 5 minutes”
By Doug Reich
“Recognize that the role of government is to protect individual rights including property rights by barring the initiation of physical force and repeal all laws and regulations in violation of this principle including any laws that abridge the freedom of production and trade
In accordance with this principle, restrict the federal government to the following activities:
The national defense
Enforcement of domestic criminal law
The court system to resolve disputes
Specifically, this would entail cutting all federal government departments except the following:
Department of State – foreign relations, treaties, etc.
Department of Justice – settle interstate legal disputes and enforce interstate criminal law issues
Department of Defense – maintenance of standing military
Department of the Interior – administer the federal government’s land and buildings
Department of the Treasury – administer finances of federal government
Repeal the Federal Reserve Act to eliminate the Federal Reserve System
Government’s gold stock made redeemable for US Dollars
US Dollars priced in gold at whatever price necessary not to contract present money supply
Federal government recognizes gold and silver as legal tender at prevailing market rates
Allow private banks to replace the Federal Reserve as depository, loan and clearing institutions
Law recognizes the difference between deposit contract and loan contract, i.e., irregular deposits made with banks do not constitute a de facto property transfer whereas a loan does constitute a transfer of property
Eliminate all federal taxes and replace with system of voluntary contributions and user fees for government services including fees to uphold contracts, register deeds, etc.
Auction off all federal lands (including waterways) and buildings except those needed for the above departments
Everything else left to states
I predict that the Dow would triple if not more in one day if this program were announced on CNBC. As well, all foreign currencies would plummet relative to the dollar which would force other countries to follow America’s lead and go back on a gold standard.
Note that this plan would lead to widespread prosperity and happiness and does not cost any money.”
http://dougreich.blogspot.com/2009/02/how-to-solve-economic-crisis-in-5.html
Vote:February 18th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Cutting jobs without cutting services, doesn’t get much better politically than that…
Depends if your grandparents were alive before the welfare state was created or not..?
Vote:February 18th, 2009 at 11:02 am
Of all the fights that the new gov’t is going to pick this will be the longest, the hardest and the most strongly resisted.
As I mentioned in a previous post govt’s have always had a devil of a time implementing change into the public service, all have resisted and all have been successful in that resistance.
Only Douglas and Prebble managed to change the public service and even then they only achieved that change by firing a truck load of them.
Vote:February 18th, 2009 at 11:10 am
PhilBest
The catch in this list is the bit that says “Everything else left to states”, so it is not actually a manifesto for small government, it is a manifeto, applicable only mainly in the US, for a small federal government and large state governments.
My list of things to do in NZ is something like this:
a) eliminate middle-class churn: stop taxing people and giving the money back in the form of government-provided goods and service. There are lots of models for doing this, so we don’t have to be prescriptive;
b) replace current system of income support (unemployment benefit, DPB, sickness benefit etc, Working for families), with an earned income tax credit;
c) limit government interventions into the market to clear cases of market failure, that can actually be addressed without creating a worse example of government failure;
d) privatise SOEs, CRIs and other crown entities. Again many models available, but I would favour a system that involved at least partial gifting of shares to taxpayers, they are their assets after all;
e) contract-out remaining service provision to the private sector wherever possible; and
f) require all remaining government departments to achieve a minimum productivity improvement (outputs divided by inputs) of 3% per annum.
I would leave monetary institutions as they are: never been a fan of the monetary cranks and their dubious ideas that paper money containing the picture of dead politicians is the root of all economic and social ills.
Vote:February 18th, 2009 at 11:17 am
Hardly surprising the PS has such problems. Their core problems can be laid at the feet of their leadership, they don’t have any. Look at the clowns that governed them over the past years, for fucks sake they couldn’t run a bath. The socialists answer to every problem was to throw money at it, of course the PS has turned into a fat bloated parasite slowly sucking the life out of the country. Money in many cases does not solve the problem but good leadership will.
Vote:February 18th, 2009 at 11:18 am
They could start by abolishing all the Commissions and Commissioners that have been created in the last decade or two they are absolutely unnecessary and their functions can easily be overseen by elected M Ps. Our Grandparents were certainly better off without them.
Vote:February 18th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Am I right by saying that the Ministry of Social Development was only set up when Labour got back into power last decade when they created it to satisfy Jim Anderton?
And now it’s grown to 9500??? Bloody hell. If we didn’t need it before we most certainly don’t need it now. Imagine the savings!
Vote:February 18th, 2009 at 11:28 am
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Social_Development_(New_Zealand)#Organisational_history:
Vote:February 18th, 2009 at 11:32 am
Whatever its constituent parts the fact that its annual wage bill has grown to over half a billion dollars is ridiculous for a country of this size. This should be the just the first round of job cuts.
Vote:February 18th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Heard some nonesense on the radio about “why is the government trying to cut public sector jobs when there is so much unemployment already?”
Each public sector job costs between 1.5 and 3 private sector ones. The state cant create jobs by just employing people.
Vote:February 18th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
How are people going to apply for things online if they are having to pawn their computers, playstations and mobiles?
What’s the bet that, like most other promised savings from govt initiated IT projects, they never eventuate.
Vote:February 18th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Ok, so it has been around for a bit eh? Although technically it was set up as we know it quite recently. And boy oh boy what a blow out in staff numbers.
Heather Roy was right, we must cut cut cut. 10% is a start…. if anybody believes that a Government must be a major employer then they may as well book their tickets to Harare
Vote:February 18th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Little more than a name change, Clint.
Yes, the staff numbers are a disgrace and as has been mentioned there will be a battle by Sir Humphrey to retain them, alas.
Any meaningful change in Public Service staff numbers really has to be done by a Government on its first day in Office with the newly sworn in Prime Minister getting the heads of Departments together and telling them to tell all their staff to clear out their desks as 40,000 people have just been sacked (but will be paid until the end of the month in lieu of notice).
Due to the ‘first day in office’ requirement the horse has somewhat bolted for the next few years.
Even the Libertarianz have a soft-cock policy of ’5 year transitional’ -whatever…sheesh! if ever there was a recipe for failure it is to have a ‘five-year-setting-up-a-committee-to-investigate’ nonsense; but other than that all the Libertarianz policies are excellent.
Vote:February 18th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
What the hell are you people on about, it is bloody easy to get rid of so called public servants, first fire the minister, second set up a parallal dept. with a real
Vote:mean lean attitude., thirdly, just stop funding the original dept.
February 18th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
this bloody thing has had more names than Ive had hot dinners in its life And its been a drain on the taxpayer from day one.
I agree with comments about reducing the number and size of governemnt departments. Theyve become a growth industry in the last couple od decades that cost plenty and produced nothing.
Time of Rodders to take the axe to them . First step is send half of them home on full pay form 3 months and tell them to get a new job.
then move the other half out of Bob Jones over priced Wellington buildings into cheaper accomodation.
Then in 6 months send half of the remainder home.
There will be no adverse effects on the tax payer only happiness Time to examine every and I do mean every idea the old days of No you cant do that are well and truly over and gone
Vote:February 18th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
LOL all these folk have redundancy entitlements. I suspect exiting public servants is cash negative for the year you do it. I dont think many of you actually deal with employees or employment law.
Vote:February 18th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
In the long run it would be cheaper than just keeping on keeping on Fact is Ive run out of money and patience where tax is concerned and I suspect many of my fellow taxpayer have also
We cant afford the luxury of these dead weight costs any more.
Vote:February 18th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
I dislike the thought that beneficiaries might enrol for benefits by use of the internet. Some will then be able to plead ignorance when they apply for benefits that they are not entitled to. A suitable excuse for benefit fraud.
Vote:To reduce expense we must;
(a) Make benefits a privilege, as distinct from a right.
(b) Remove any rights to privacy when you apply for a benefit. The savings this would result in from reduction in fraudulent transactions would be enormous.
(c) The privilege of receiving a benefit would be forfeited by anybody threatening an employee of the Social Welfare Dept. It is incredible that they need security officers and they are handing out money, not taking it in.
(d) The term beneficiary will be used and not that dreadfully sick expression “client”. A client is somebody that pays you money, not somebody who bludges money off you.
(e) Each beneficiary is to provide a very simple budget; like how much will go on food, how much on fun and how much on clothing; something simple that requires a little thought – not much thought – just a little thought.
(f) Beneficiaries will be encouraged to thank taxpayers for their largesse. This is because few beneficiaries realise where their dosh ultimately comes from.
February 18th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Every time they invent a machine that can do the work of 3 men, there are cheers – but not from those 3 men!
Vote:February 18th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Kiwiblog comments at their finest:
(Paraphrasing slightly)
Philbest at 10:43am:
“Well, I ain’t never heard a no “Ministry of Social Development, so it carn’t be doin’ nothin’ any good!”
NZ capitalist at 10:43am:
“Well, I ain’t never heard a no “Ministry of Social Development, so it carn’t be doin’ nothin’ any good!”
baxter at 11:18am:
“Well, I ain’t never heard a no “Ministry of Social Development, so it carn’t be doin’ nothin’ any good!”
Clintheine at 1:22am:
“Well, I ain’t never heard a no “Ministry of Social Development, so it carn’t be doin’ nothin’ any good!”
gd at 1:45pm:
Vote:“Well, I ain’t never heard a no “Ministry of Social Development, so it carn’t be doin’ nothin’ any good!”
February 18th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Every time they invent a machine that can do the work of 3 men, there are cheers – but not from those 3 men because they are busy learning how to operate and service the machine.
Vote:February 18th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
georgebolwing I would add
Seed the start-up new investment banks, depositor owned, match deposits dollar for dollar to a certain level to start up investment banks to lend to it’s depositors in specialised areas, such as horticulture, aquaculture, etc anything except residential property (commercial property would be OK). Set up boards made up of experts in the field, and subsidise the infrastructure, an office, and computer systems. “Bank in a box”. This is an example of good Government spending. Establish reporting standards, and allow zero reserves up to a certain size, at which point the Government gets paid back.
The problems we face are caused by bad banking regulation and practice. The solution is in free enterprise. Don’t bail out the old start new. No Government guarantees it’s “buyer beware”.
Vote:February 18th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
To be fair most of the 500 jobs will come out of the call centres as Work and Income and StudyLink try and drive a significant portion of their clients online. Work and Income estimate that with the aging population at least 25% of their clients can be online in the next 4 years reducing the need for Superannuation case managers.
Vote: