Wednesday 23 March 2011

TIME TO SORT SHIT

John Key has sent a strong message - life in the public service is going to change - because it has to.
We say - make a super policy Ministry - so out with Ministry of Women's Affairs, Ministry of Maori Affairs, and the Ministry of Veterans Affairs and the Families Commission Pacific Island Affairs.

One of the drivers of this government is to get the public service to act like a well oiled machine - So housing all policy under one umbrella is sensible. At the moment the development of policy requires endless hours of consultation with other departments about their thoughts and feelings on various initiatives. Putting it all into one big melting pot is just common sense. So any department where the core aim is to increase the economic and social well being of people should be housed together.

The Government has already started on the super groupings with Ministry of Agriculture Forestry and Fish - which will probably end up as the Ministry for Primary Industries.

There are already moves to look at bulk purchasing, streamlining tendering processes and taking a good hard look at what is nice to do as opposed what is necessary. So the job of getting greater efficiencies from the public sector is well under way. But there is still a lot more that can be done.

The next few years will be interesting and challenging. But changes to the public sector are not in the Governments " nice to do projects" they are an absolutely necessity if we are to climb out of the economic troughs we can expect to face in the next few years.





1 comment:

Nigel said...

That's a good idea, as long as it doesn't end up staffed mainly by white, middle class, middle aged men.