Saving ideas from those who know

THIS newspaper was critical of the public survey launched by the ‘Reducing the Cost of Public Services Sub-Committee’ a few weeks ago. We gave sub-committee chairman Deputy Dave Mahoney the full ‘Lord Kitchener’ treatment on the front page – maybe that encouraged the public to engage. More than 600 people went on to offer 1,400 suggestions to the sub-committee. So far, so good.

Our concerns about the process was that it seemed set up to fail – though so far the States has seemed genuinely enthusiastic about it and embracing potential opportunities.

But the request to identify savings has seen a quarter of respondents come back with ideas about tax, all kinds of taxes and charges, which sit outside of the sub-committee’s scope.

So probably most noteworthy at this stage is the level of engagement from within the public sector – nearly 200 people offering more than 400 ideas, the biggest group of them focused on restructuring and rationalisation.

Some public sector staff feel ground down by the stop-start nature of much-vaunted public sector ‘transformation’ which has gone on for decades. They don’t like the change they’ve seen, or the change they were promised never happened. This kind of thing happens in other places too and often people don’t leave, but tend to get 'lost' within organisations.

So it’s heartening to see what one hopes will be constructive engagement on key issues from those who should know, rather than simply those who feel ripped off paying deputies £800 a week each and want to moan about it.

Let’s hope their time has come, and that meaningful change, and savings, might emerge.