OPINION | Wednesday, 12 December 2007

Bureaucracy beckons

A big PR razzmatazz was drummed up four years ago when a White Paper entitled ‘A Public Service for the 21st Century’ was launched. It announced new public service charters. These would commit departments to deliver on what citizens could expect the public service to provide them with. Government services were to be packaged as part of a consumer-oriented programme, in which the taxpayer would be considered king, or at least be acknowledged to have significant rights.
One cannot deny that improvements have surfaced after these attempts to inculcate a service oriented culture. In his 2004 report outgoing Ombudsman Mr Joseph Sammut, himself a former head of the civil service, said there should be consistent, across-the-board application of redress for misadministration in the public service while he lamented of a general deterioration in the top-to-down attitudes of certain departments. One typical example is the seven-year delay associated with the planning and erection of a Ta’ Qali crafts village.
More remains to be done and it is not uncommon to hear about complaints on the contemptuous ways by which citizens’ specific requests are dealt with throughout a certain range of public services. This is just as prevalent in areas where IT breakthroughs are allegedly being made, as in more traditional sectors of civil service activity.
Ironically work associated with the demolition and clearing of Ricasoli site in preparation of the Smart City project seems to have run amok of the usual bureaucracy. Yet even the minister responsible for SmartCity has cast doubts whether we can inculcate effectiveness in central bureaucracy when Smart City starts winning applications from global investors to set up shop.
Down the years, one can thank God for little mercies and the hard-won improvements in central administration but critics still cry out that it remains a bloated service, grossly over-manned. There is no prize for guessing that it is under-deployed. This is not the fault of its 35,000 members.
The hierarchy cocoons workforce made indolent by an assumption that their post is a job for life. Now we hear this week that close to two thousand part-timers have been assigned a permanent job status. With an administration is in last days this gesture comes with a whiff of electioneering gusto.
So why is the level of productivity not at par with that of the private sector? The answer is multifarious one. Although wages parity with the private sector has been reached in many grades, it is a pity that productivity has not risen in line with the private sector. Politicians have since independence been fearful of trailing in political patronage.
This time the claptrap is for more efficiency which is our “Holy Grail” to catch up in view of the arrival of investors alias SmartCity where in Dubai by comparison it is reputed that companies can be approved and licensed in ten days flat.
The e-Minister Dr Austin Gatt dreams to jettison the Service in the rarefied air of cyberspace efficiency. We all wish him well. The Opposition may well ask if this inertia on such an important part of the restructuring agenda is not bare-faced prevarication.
Regrettably there is so much at stake. It is perplexing why we have been papering the cracks rather than targeting the root of the problem. This is an unsolved mystery. Certainly accountability for management of the economy falls squarely on the government assisted by the Service.
Typically, the workforce goes on half days routine reminiscent of the balmy Colonial days. Sadly all this occurs at the apex of the tourist and export season when it closes its shutters to the public at 1.00 pm for 3 whole months.
Repeatedly both FOI and the Malta Employers’ Association (MEA) called on the government to spruce up the public sector rendering it more efficient, through a planned and phased reduction in extra manpower and for tighter control of expenditure in order to address the fiscal deficit.
Both highlighted the need for the government to cut inefficient expenditure and trim duplication in agencies and weed out alleged conflicts of interest by political appointees wearing too many hats. Many solutions are penned by different columnists. Principally they plead for urgent remedial action to avoid.