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Originally Posted by phil235
Also, you can't really discuss the size of the public service without looking at the number of consultants in the shadow public service, which has been ballooning for years. The government is at least talking about reducing consulting expenses, which would have a bigger positive impact on budgets than staff cuts (not to mention the impact on public service morale). If you feel that the public service has a lot of waste, I would love to introduce you to the Deloittes and McKinseys of this world. Having dealt with those types of consultants extensively, I particularly enjoy the idea of paying someone who just left the public service three times as much to provide the same advice, with very little stake in the long-term outcome of what they are advising on.
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And then not taking their advice because it's too expensive.
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Originally Posted by RideauRat
while I agree the number of PS workers is exuberantly high for no reason our population did grow little under 9 million people, also, Tech has increased, Society has changed, and so did the Bureaucracy that may of comes along with all of the above. Why aren't more systems like Passport Canada automated? Who knows at this point.
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New Zeeland has one Government user portal that does everything, like EVERYTHING. Here, one hand doesn't speak to the other. How can a frauder usethe identity of a person who works and pays taxes to claim CERB? Should the Government not see, and say "hey, this person has a job and pays taxes, why are the claiming CERB? Maybe we should contact them and tell them they may have been hacked!".
Here's an excellent video from Paige Saunders on the subject.
• Video Link
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Originally Posted by OTownandDown
I'm... a consultant. lol
I agree the number of consultants HAS ballooned, both consultants retained for one-off projects, and a ridiculous number working 'on contract' on a semi-permanent basis. I suspect the consultants who semi-permanently move in to a desk are not listed in the books in the same way as a full time employee. (I'm not talking about noobs who are 'on contract' and then 'made permanent' I mean consultants who work full time in house, take their $25k/month over 10 months, then leave).
The same has happened at the City of Ottawa, they are full of Colliers employees who have @Ottawa.ca email addresses, and physical desks. Are they actually on the books in the right place, or is the City 'cost cutting' by not having to pay for a retirement fund for Colliers employees?
The problem I'm seeing: Regular employees responsible for the programs I'm consulted on are literal bags of hammers. Speaking to a large group via Teams, it's tough to find a few brain cells to rub together. I do 99% of the work, a single person, and the team of 10 on the other side can't produce anything, don't absorb the information I provide, and the programs and services are delayed, limited in scope to cause additional blowback (and more consulting, year over year, for 10+ years on average), or cancelled altogether.
Its a catch-22 a bit. We need well paid, professional employees in the public service, who specialize in the task. Currently we have low paid pions who move around every 3 years out of boredom (aka 'stress', which is just an existential crisis labelled as stress) and they don't necessarily need prior experience or specialize in a topic, they just need their 'Pion PY3' level to be able to move about at will.
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I do believe there is a lot of efficiencies to be found in Government. It seems no one does much of anything because they are in meetings most of the time trying to figure out what to do next, but nothing gets done because no one agrees (sometimes, people just don't get it), things are too expensive, or because of high turnover (people jumping from one position to the next to make more money or because the get frustrated from the lack of progress in their current department).
Ultimately, I blame the politicians for having no direction. Random new programs that may or may not be necessary instead of fixing what we have. And if the Conservatives come in, it will be blind cuts, not actual efficiencies.
I don't work for Government, this is what I gather from friends and family who work in Government. Every story frustrates me to no end. Fixing this and finding ACTUAL efficiencies is possible, but no one is willing to step up.