More mergers?
March 11th, 2011 at 11:00 am by David FarrarAndrea Vance in the Dom Post reports:
Up to 65 jobs will go in a merger of agriculture and fisheries ministries and the Government is hinting more departments could be pushed together.
Workers at the Fisheries Ministry and Agriculture and Forestry Ministry were told of the move yesterday.
The Public Service Association said staff were told 65 jobs would go. They are likely to be in Wellington headquarters and regions where there are both MAF and Fisheries offices.
State Services Minister Tony Ryall said the merger would reduce “back-office bureaucracy” and save up to $10 million.
Good. Each seperate agency means the cost of a seperate IT system, a seperate HR Department, a seperate payroll system, a seperate CEO.
Speculation is rife that Treasury, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and State Services Commission may merge some functions. There are suggestions Culture and Heritage may join with Internal Affairs, which swallowed up Archives NZ and the National Library last year with the loss of 55 jobs.
I’ve said this before, but I think time is up on SSC. Its reputation amongst the rest of the public service is not at all good, and many hold the view that it no longer adds value to the state sector.
I think one could combine SSC and DPMC together, and not only have significant cost savings but also improved performance. DPMC generally has an excellent reputation, and is well respected.
The other change which would be beneficial would be to combine all the small social policy ministrues into one Ministry of Social Policy. An MSP would have far more influence on Government decisions than all the small ministries such as Women’s Affairs.
Related posts:
- The future public sector
- Some state sector reform
- The state sector
- Do we need a State Services Commission?
March 11th, 2011 at 11:08 am
That $10M saving represents all of about 2 hours’ worth of government borrowing. It’s not exactly going to balance the books – a bit like me saving 10c on my groceries if I was borrowing $300/week.
Vote:A start but a hell of a long way to go.
March 11th, 2011 at 11:18 am
There was a tendency to merge ministries in the 1970′s with the then Ministry of Transport being one of the largest. There was also close control exercised by SSC for HR functions, IT and office accommodation. Interestingly the old NZ Electricity Department was rolled into the Ministry of Energy (a most uneasy relationship) and then the former NZ Electricity Department operation was later split into five different organisations (Genesis, Mighty River, Meridian, Contact and Transpower). Rogernomics saw the split up of departments presumably on the basis that smaller departments were more efficient and CEO’s could better arrange accommodation, IT, payroll etc. There was also idelogical need at the time to split ‘policy’ from ‘delivery’.
It is interesting that the trend is now to re-merge departments into big units. Perhaps the Transpower, Mighty River, Genesis, Meridian and the Electricity Authority could be re-merged to obtain efficiencies.
Vote:March 11th, 2011 at 12:01 pm
Why does everyone only consider two solutions to these issues. Stay split or merge.
What would be wrong with having an IT department that serviced multiple ministries/agencies. There is no technical reason why that would not work. Heck, the entire government should be capable of running of a single email system, each entity as a separate organisation. Likewise entire domains can be shared across a single IT structure. It’s not fricken rocket science. Someone should introduce them to the concept of cloud computing. It’s been round for ages but in it’s current form that’s the what they need.
You should also be able to create clusters of HR/Payroll as well which service multiple ministries/agencies.
That way you can maintain the important things such as independence of each CEO, policy and a separate operational budget but still make the cost savings that are claimed.
Unless of course cost savings are only a small part of the reason…
Vote:March 11th, 2011 at 12:10 pm
matt – “Someone should introduce them to the concept of cloud computing.” The Government Technology Services in Infernal Affairs is doing a lot of work around whole-of-govt. cloud computing.
Yay – mergers mean boom times for consultants and system integrators.
There used to be a Ministry of Social Policy from the break-out of DSW in the 1990′s. Then it got rolled back into DSW Mk. II (MSD). I’d make the case for de-merging CYF from MSD.
Vote:March 11th, 2011 at 12:10 pm
Actual savings will only start when they tackle health education and welfare where all the money is spent.
Meanwhile if you REALLY want to save money on the bureaucracy stop pissing around with mergers (whcih may or may not be a good thing) and just STOP doing a whole bunch of things. Dont merge the Ministry of Women’s Affairs with some social policy department – just get rid of it. There are plenty of women policy advisors across all departments to give a “women’s perspective” assuming such a thing is relevant to the policy in question. But mostly, just stop. Fire everyone with the words “communication” or “strategy” on their business cards, stop sending people overseas unless they actually have to go and staff an embassy, stop sticking your collective bureaucratic nose into our affairs and go and get a real job.
Vote:March 11th, 2011 at 12:22 pm
They could call it DOSAC.
Vote:March 11th, 2011 at 12:38 pm
A pig is always a pig, even with lipstick.
Vote:March 11th, 2011 at 8:51 pm
What KiwiGreg said. Merge a lot of them with the dole queue.
Vote:Muldoon started the “give everyone a minstry post” thing to have the caucus dependent on him of largesse. It needs to be killed off dead.
March 11th, 2011 at 9:06 pm
State Services Minister Tony Ryall said the merger would reduce “back-office bureaucracy” and save up to $10 million.
Why the fuck do politicians of all ilks take every opportunity to point out to the dumbos: i.e. us, that they would never ever not once do anything ever to “frontline jobs.”
Do these fucking mental idiots imagine that most of us really don’t understand that, fucking d’oh, people at the front counter of say, a bank, wouldn’t do very fucking well if there wasn’t a huge army of highly paid office workers drawing Visio diagrams, thinking about restructuring and “leading” and pretending to know what the fuck we’re talking about?
Who are the idiots the politicians are talking to when they spout such profound and utter crap? Don’t forget Tony, most of us, in fact, are just like you. Except we’re not up ourselves.
Vote:March 12th, 2011 at 8:18 am
My hope is that “mergers” are cover for dissolution. If the merger of Women’s Affairs into an MSP was announced, I’d hope they’d cut the remaining staff shortly thereafter… and no-one would notice because an office within an entity closing is not as much news since it seems organizational rather than ideological. To cover their tracks even better, they could merge departments within MSP a few times before eliminating them so no-one would be able to tell what was really being cut.
Vote:March 12th, 2011 at 8:47 am
Must try harder.
Vote:March 12th, 2011 at 11:46 am
Perhaps they could merge all the CRIs and call it the Doers of Scientific and Industrial Research
Vote:March 12th, 2011 at 9:07 pm
Ministry of culture and heritage?
Didn’t even know about that one, who do they hand my money too, apart from themselves and their buddies?
Why is it, that every election we end up with some new ministry to appease minority MMP parties? These costly little ego trips are just unnecessary.
Vote: