Richard Digard: Clear the way for savings

It is difficult to over-emphasise how significant this is, for all the cynicism around what is a largely hidden process, or where it’s ultimately headed.

Second, an essential initiative aimed at improving things for taxpayers and users of States services is being held up by some politicians.

Worrying, isn’t it? Some of those supposed elected champions of Mr and Mrs Guernsey are frustrating moves by civil servants to cut costs, introduce efficiencies and streamline the way the system operates. Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?

But before you dismiss this as mere Digard conjecture, let me offer some proof: Policy & Resources’ Jonathan Le Tocq’s public rebuttal of the claim from Education Sport & Culture that it isn’t to blame for its upcoming budget overspend.

True, his comments weren’t badged that way. But pared to its core meaning, this was P&R effectively telling a major department to stop playing fast and loose with public funds.

The foundations for that admonition are the work done by PwC to benchmark how well States committees are performing and, so far, big spenders Health, ESC and Home Affairs have been exposed to its critical gaze.

Health, under president Heidi Soulsby, has settled down and started to respond to the implicit criticisms levelled by PwC – 17% more expensive than its peers – and has got its act and budget under control.

ESC, on the other hand, says its own looming overspend is because it’s ‘hard’ for it to avoid. Err, that’s after its own staff have identified ways of making those savings.

It’s the same at Home Affairs. Officials there have come up with ways of reducing costs and becoming more efficient, but the politicians are ignoring them.

Look at it from the staff side and you can get a better sense of where I’m coming from in saying that the public sector transformation process has well and truly started.

Firstly, the States’ chief executive has established a leadership team and all the heads of the main departments have new objectives.

So if you’re chief secretary to one of the committees, your individual priorities are clear: come in on budget, deliver the work programme at or below budget and control and maintain bottom line pay costs.

That’s pretty much a direct quote, by the way.

And just to reinforce that, senior civil servants are now being judged on how they keep costs down – across the board and including their payroll budget. Quite a change.

Their team’s objectives are similarly focused: delivery of the P&R plan (effectively the States-approved business plan), make Service Guernsey (the transformation programme) real, and ensure everyone knows they answer to the central leadership team.

That last one’s a bit clumsy but it basically means all public sector employees should be aligned to States objectives, not those of their department/committee.

Put simply, the civil service bosses are trying to winkle everyone out of their familiar, historic silos, stripping away duplicated services such as finance, IT, HR and procurement, and focusing staff on the services they offer.

Those services are also being reviewed – why is it being provided? How does the recipient want to receive it? (rather than how the department historically delivered it). Where should it be offered from and how can technology (online services etc) help?

This is particularly significant seeing how the States has grown over the decades. Now, although there are just six principal committees, the taxpayer is maintaining about 100 separate administrative sites. Yes, 100-plus.

Ultimately, the objective would be to have a one-site campus for the States of Guernsey. Financially, that’s a way off but a lot of the current movement is geared towards making that ultimately possible.

It’s why, for example, the Joint Emergency Services Control Centre was established – one office providing 24/7 emergency call handling rather than police, fire, ambulance and coastguard each providing their own as they used to.

Yes, there were some hiccups, some opposition and some cultural differences to absorb. But does it make any sense to have these services separate and duplicated?

Similarly with PwC’s suggestion that amalgamation of the Fire and Rescue and Ambulance services should be explored to reap potential savings and efficiencies, including co-location and merger of services.

That could lead to savings of £600,000 a year – but has been turned down by the politicians on Home Affairs.

I can say that confidently as the idea of merger was put to PwC by Home’s own staff because they believe it can be made to work and, mindful of their own responsibilities and obligations to government as a whole, know it makes sense.

Actually, it might be better to locate ambulance services at the PEH, where paramedics could be deployed in A&E or elsewhere when not responding to an emergency, but some rationalisation is better than none.

So, as I say, there is plenty of evidence to suggest politicians, not civil servants, are standing in the way of savings and efficiencies.

Which brings us on to Education and president Paul Le Pelley’s ‘clarity’ statement on its looming overspend, a 900-word admission of not having its finger on the financial pulse or of being aligned to government priorities.

Why he signed it, we’ll never know, as it was cringe-making: ‘Because of the centralisation of some budgets we have also lost the flexibility to reduce our discretionary spend in some areas such as the purchasing of IT equipment or recruitment costs, which makes achieving further savings more and more challenging,’ he said.

In other words: ‘We’ve already made the easy savings but we don’t want to make others identified by our own staff and validated by PwC because, well, we just don’t.’

We should perhaps also note in passing that the five political members of Education collectively receive a total of about £16,500 a month to look after your taxpayer interests.

That payment for (non?) performance might also explain Deputy Le Tocq’s rather sharp statement the other day contradicting ESC’s attempt at justifying its overspend/hand-wringing about being underfunded but with £74.8m at its disposal.

‘…it is crucial that all committees remain resolute in our collective efforts to identify and deliver savings wherever possible,’ he said.

That ‘wherever possible’ is telling because potential has been identified by the experts and Education and other committees are not pursuing that.

P&R’s robust intervention also highlights the turf war developing as civil service reforms start to take hold but political process and personalities are holding it back in key areas.

Doing what’s right v. holding onto personal or departmental fiefdoms… Yes, this is ultimately about good governance and there’s a lot of frustration that I’ve detected within the service that officials believe some deputies aren’t stepping up to the mark.

And now, thanks to Education’s rather crass ‘clarification’ and P&R’s immediate slap-down, that all out in the open.

And finally…

I see that the row over population management and the damage it is doing to certain sectors isn’t going away any time soon, with Home Affairs in no mood to take a lead on resolving matters.

Instead, it’s booted the complaints towards an independent advisory panel which, apparently, is unaware of any concerns about how the new system is operation. Given all the feedback there’s been about the new regime, that’s perhaps a bit surprising and indicates it hasn’t done any homework of its own in this area.

Instead, Home Affairs is effectively asking everyone who has expressed unease about the legislation to repeat those comments to the Population Employment Advisory Panel.

Sometimes, it’s hard to shake off the feeling that no one really cares about the economy.

Richard Digard is a freelance writer, consultant and a former editor of the Guernsey Press.