This is how to shut the 'deceit gap'
WHEN the States decided 22 years ago to limit the number of public sector staff, it did so with five clear objectives in mind. These included the sustainability of the future cost, likely wage inflation, recruitment problems, competition with private employers and the impact on population with off-island recruitment.
WHEN the States decided 22 years ago to limit the number of public sector staff, it did so with five clear objectives in mind. These included the sustainability of the future cost, likely wage inflation, recruitment problems, competition with private employers and the impact on population with off-island recruitment.
Initially, it was successful and extended from just civil servants to all States employees.
Since then, however, what was established as an interim measure became increasingly irrelevant as successive States happily got around its provisions by taking on more staff but not counting them because they were not classified as full time equivalents.
It was a particularly bureaucratic way of circumventing the will of the States but, since no one had any interest in controlling costs, each department connived in paying lip service to number limitation while taking on extra 'invisibles'.
As we reported yesterday, the 'deceit gap' between reality and pretence was close to an extra 900 bodies. It was the Scrutiny Committee in 2006 that finally blew the whistle on what was going on and the States agreed to move to a cost capping system - but which is also ineffective.
The current Assembly has a rare opportunity to take the initiative on this, since it is not tainted by the past practices, and put in payroll restraints that work.
As it is, Scrutiny's 2006 recommendations about how to measure headcount, vacancies and trends such as public- to private-sector ratios have yet to be implemented as have standardised annual reports to enable close monitoring of staff numbers and costs.
What the States has to date spectacularly failed to do is set departmental budgets for headcounts.
It is only by having a ceiling on numbers and wage cost that government will be able to claim with any credibility that it is committed to getting to grips with its single biggest item of expenditure.
The improved reporting may well follow Treasury and Resources' new-look accounts, which emphasises performance against objectives as well as expenditure, but real progress would take political will.
But while ministers are allowed to treat their departments as individual fiefs that will not happen - to the detriment of taxpayers.
