I’m going to claim partial credit for that idea.  I can’t remember whether I actually said it to Ruairi himself, but I was punting the idea around the Labour Party backrooms for a couple of weeks before I left for Canada.  Here’s some of the flesh I put on the bones of the idea while talking to people about it.

From East Lothian Museum (licenced under Creative Commons)

Why a Minister?

So why do you need a Minister for public sector reform?  Why not a committee or a working group or even just a Junior Minister?  The reason for this is that in order for the Public Service to both respect and cooperate with the process, and for the person in question to be able to legislate (both primary & secondary) at will, a cabinet level post is required.  This also stops, or at least hinders, interference from other Ministers. 

Who that Minister should be is a different matter, but it would need to be someone with a very good idea of what they wanted, the determination (and vision) to see it through, and a strong two-way respect for/from the public service as a whole.  Preferably, it should be a TD who’s not going to run for election again – this avoids too much personal risk entering the decision-making equation.

This Department Will Self-Destruct in…

Public service reform of the type we’re envisaging here isn’t an ongoing process.  This is a once-a-generation type of change we’re looking at.  Smaller, incremental change should be ongoing, (and the bigger process must create systems that facilitate it) but this is the time – and the opportunity – for major structural change.

Because of this, it’s important to give the proposed Department of Public Service Reform a predetermined lifetime.  Five years, being the normal lifetime of a Government (all going well), would be appropriate.  It’s long enough to hopefully avoid procrastination and “waiting them out”, but short enough that there’s a visible endline at all times.

The staff (more to follow) hired for the Department should be on five year contracts or secondments.  Those not already Civil Servants should not become Civil Servants in the old sense of the term (job for life, etc), but should of course have decent terms and conditions.

Civil Servants Deciding Public Sector Reform?

As I’m sure readers are already mentally pointing out, establishing a Government Department of Public Service Reform will mean having a building full of civil servants doing the work.  The people who best understand the public sector are public servants themselves.  But they’re also an interested party – some interested in strong reform, others interested in the status quo.  Group theory would suggest that in large numbers they’ll tend towards the latter.

So yes, you need civil servants working in this hypothetical Department.  But you also need to bring in people from the wider public service and from the non-public sector.  I’d say that your ideal mix would have the analysis/decision-making units of the Department made up of civil servants, other public servants and non-public sector people (be they from academia, private sector, NGOs or elsewhere).  It would also include people from each of those sectors (civil/public/non) from other countries.  The US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand should be considered just as much as European nations.

The civil servants assigned to this Department should be hand selected from the best and brightest in the rest of the public sector.  They should be recruited by the new Department, not sent to it because they’re an inconvenience or of no use to their previous Department (as is alleged to so often happen in the Irish public service).

A mix like this would, hopefully, allow for some creative thinking while taking into account how the public service actually works in practice.

Bringing it all together

With a good Minister and the active cooperation of other Government Ministers, such a Department could be making a real difference in a realatively short time.  Its remit should be broad enough to allow for service improvements, quality control improvements and cost-beneficial additions as well as cost cutting.

But, I hear you cry, the Unions would never allow it.  Not right now they wouldn’t.  And that’s why one or more parties needs to run into the next General Election with a policy like this (in about as much detail as I’ve given) clearly laid out.

While the Unions might complain about such proposals, and some of the consequential reforms, being brought in off the cuff, it’s a different ball game altogether when there’s a clear mandate in place from the people.  One might take one’s chances on industrial action when there’s no clear mandate.  But if the people have spoken clearly, they’re not going to take withdrawl of any services well.

So, what we need is:

• A Minister for Public Service Reform
• A Department that only lasts 5 years
• Lots of non-civil servants staffing that Department
• Wide-ranging powers and terms of reference
• An election

Shouldn’t be a problem, then.

Took a bit longer to get back to blogging than expected, due to a bug in the upgrade of WordPress, but all sorted now.

Childers Election Poster

A few online things to note from the campaign – Liveblogs and Twitter really came to life during the counts & results phase.  IrishElection.com did brilliantly at that stage.  The weakness of these media is still there, though: there’s no way of knowing what the reliability of the source is.  In the noise, there are great, solid sources (like your correspondant), and sources that are full of shite (like the Libertas spinners).  However, that applied equally to RTÉ, who occasionally got their announcements wrong.

Blogs, Facebook and YouTube didn’t have much effect on the campaign.  Having talked to a few internet-enabled politicos who were managing candidate websites, the traffic levels on election day and the few days before were higher than normal, but still in the low hundreds region at the highest.

I’m off to Canada in a month’s time (via DC), where the possibility of an election can’t be discounted.  July 27th is the date they’re theorising about, which would give me a good week of campaigning!

On another note, check out my little brother’s blog – he’s travelling around Asia on the way to Australia, and has just completed a 21-day trek in the Himalayas.

They’ve an even worse card security procedure, which they continue to use despite my repeated complaints.

AIB

Picture the scene, if you will.  Something fishy is going on on your credit card (normally it’s small value internet transactions).  The transactions are flagged up to the credit card fraud department, and they call you.

The Withheld Number

They call you from a withheld number.  You answer the phone, and the caller claims to be AIB Credit Card services, and asks you to prove to them that you’re actually the card holder!

At this stage on one call (and I get many from them – often over the same repeated transaction…another fail) I pointed out that as I was in posession of a “known good” phone number (i.e. the one that was attached to the credit card), and they were in posession of nothing more than a claim to be AIB, I was the one who should be asking the verification questions.  They didn’t like that.

Anyway, if you’re not as security aware as I am, you give them your credit card number, expiry date and full billing address (having already confirmed your name at the start of the conversation), and they then proceed to query some transactions.

How to scam an AIB customer

All the would be scammer needs to do to get an AIB customer’s credit card details is dial #31#<target’s phone number>.  The call will come up on the target’s phone as “Number Witheld” or “Anonymous” or similar.

90% of customers will then give the credit card number, expiry date, billing address and probably even the CVV2 number from the back of the card without question.

If the person refuses to give the details, the scammer can even refer them to the phone number on the back of the card, where AIB’s real credit card services will confirm that yes, that is how the calls come.  But no, there’ s no flags on their account at the moment – it must have all been cleared up.

What AIB should be doing

The correct way to handle this, in so far as there is one, is to call from a verifiable number (i.e. the one that appears on the back of the card), and ask people to call back to the number that appears on the back of the card (not “call 01 654….”, but “call us on the number on the back of your credit card”), or even better, a well known freephone telephone banking number (along the lines of the 1890 242424 number).

Bruce Schneier would have a heart attack if he heard this was coming from the two largest banks in the country.  Although, given what those two banks have been up to, it’s shouldn’t be too much of a surprise…

38% of people pay no income tax.  But they all pay tax.

Feel Familiar? (from topnews.in)

VAT, or sales tax, is paid by everyone, without exception.  While individual transactions or products may not have VATs (sinfully, stud farm fees have no VAT, but electricity and heating oil do), everyone from the widow on a couple of hundred euro a week to the Brian Goggins of this world on his measly “less than €2m” per year (that’s €38,000 a week in old money) pays VAT.  That 38% who pay no tax includes those on pensions, disability allowances, single mothers, full time carers, etc, etc.

Pity the Rich

The next step in that argument from the Government is that the top one third of people pay two thirds of income tax.  Which Noel Dempsey implied is almost unfair on them.  It’s only unfair on them if they earn less than two thirds of the total income!  In fact, it’s really only unfair on them if they earn less than two thirds of what we could refer to as the “income above subsistence”.

What we need to know is what each decile of the workforce earns, and what it pays in tax.  If the top decile (i.e. the top 10% of earners) earns one third of all income, as I would predict, then it’s perfectly fine in my mind for them to pay at least one third of the income tax take.  Despite  a bit of cursory research this morning, there doesn’t seem to be any recent statistic available on this.  (I’m working on getting it off the Government.)

Look before you Leap

So let’s see the full picture.  Before we go tinkering with the tax system, let’s know not just who pays what proportion of the income tax take, but what proportion of their income that is.  Only then will we know if the changes that will come about in the new Mini Budget (which, by the way, I predicted back in October) are fair and if everyone’s paying their share.

Why do I get the feeling that the builders and bankers will pay little, and those on average incomes will get hit hardest?

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) doesn’t mess about.  If companies or their executives are caught fiddling the books, commiting fraud, misrepresenting the situation to the market or any of a huge variety of other offences they are arrested.  And not quietly.  The do what’s called a Perp walk.

The guys who are alledged to have caused the collapse of Bear Stearns were dragged from their homes in handcuffs in front of the media by FBI agents.

Raplh Cioffi being Perp Walked (from aishamusic)

Michael Tannin of Bear Stearns being Perp Walked (from Wall Street Fighter)

This has caused a huge deterrent factor in the States.  Here in Ireland, the chances of someone being prosecuted over what’s happened in the banks, even when it appears that there was “fraud” involved, is minimal.

The chances of them being arrested and brought in front of the courts in handcuffs is even smaller.

The two guys pictured here were arrested on suspicion of ‘conspiracy’.  Under US law, a not dissimilar thing in these cases from the “fraud” George Lee described on Morning Ireland.

Enron’s senior executives hit exactly the same problem when it appeared that they had misrepresented their company’s position in annual accounts for several years running (ring any bells?).  Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were both perp walked, prosecuted and sent to jail.

Jeff Skilling under arrest (from cara ellison)

Publicly.

Ken Lay under arrest (from cara ellison)

News Observer puts it very well in a piece they carried after they showed a perp walk photo on their front page:

This is the occasion, after an arrest is made, when the accused is being taken from one place — like a lockup — to another place — like a courthouse. Or maybe from the courthouse to another place. This is usually the best opportunity for photographers to get pictures or video of the perp.

In high profile cases, the perp walk takes on special symbolism. It conveys a message from law enforcement: We got him. We are on the case.

In cases of white-collar crime, it has taken on an even greater significance. It is law enforcement’s way of sending the message that even though the accused may be a millionaire and a big-deal executive, he is going to be treated like a common criminal.

There is nothing that focuses the minds of big-shots on Wall Street like the sight of a former colleague being marched in handcuffs past a swarm of cameras by federal agents. Sometimes the federal agents actually walk into the big Wall Street firms and march the accused right out of his office, in front of co-workers.

Our problem here is two fold.  First, you never see white collar criminals being perp walked.  Second, we apparently (if you listen to the Minister for Finance, who said that there was nothing illegal about what’s being going on in Anglo) have no laws against anything that’s happened to date.  For shame.

Bring in the perp walk.  If it’s necessary, bring in the laws to make what’s been going on illegal.  But I don’t think it’s necessary.  Fraud has been illegal in Ireland for a very, very long time.

Budget 2009 seems like a long time ago.  Things have gotten a hell of a lot worse since then.  But all the warning signs were there, and the Government’s failure to address them has been astonishing.  Still, in February, they’re only talking about doing something.

Government Buildings (originally from fantasyjackpalance.com)

As I said back in October, what people want is a plan.  Some sign that there’s an end to this, and that the Government has even a vague notion about how we’ll get there.  If there’s an end in sight, even if it’s distant, people will be far more likely to take a bit of pain in the interim.  At the moment, people are being asked to take pain with no particular reasons being given.  It’s no wonder they’re not happy.

So, Budget 2009 has come and gone (at least until next week, when Brian Lenihan starts reversing decisions, and March, when he needs a mini-Budget because all the income predictions are wildly optimistic).

That was my opening line in October, and I stand by it.  It only took them a week to start reversing on medical cards and other, less controversial decisions.  Still, there was no reversal on the prize money for the dogs.  No turnaround on wealthy people paying less PRSI.

Today, the social partners (to the total exclusion of the elected representatives of the people) are deciding what pain should be administered, and who should feel it.  Of course, that’s not IBEC or ICTU’s fault.  They’re being told to pick from a menu of cuts, which the Government will then try to deny all responsibility for. This is a total abdication of duty by the Government.  These decisions needed to be taken this time last year, when it was clear to us all what was gonig on, rather than now, when Ireland’s reputation is in the toilet.  I was in Brussels last week, and people there are literally shocked at what we’ve done.  And at what we plan to do.  As one former Prime Minister, also a leading economist, said to me, cutting spending and making people unemployed in this situation “is like throwing petrol on a fire.”  There are only three countries in the EU doing nothing right now – Greece, Denmark and Ireland.  And Ireland is the only one planning to get itself out of this situation by making the situation worse.

Since when has the best solution to rising unemployment and a lack of money in the economy (because those are the two real factors at the moment) been to sack a load of people and cause the rest to have less money in their pockets and fear for their futures?

Regardless of the PR war that’s likely to ensue between employers, unions and Government (which the unions will inevitably lose because they’re terrible at PR), it’s likely that the outcome will require changes to the tax base, so my prediction of a mini-Budget in March is well on the way.  Even if the end result doesn’t require a mini Budget, the Department of Finance’s quarterly numbers in April sure as hell will.

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. (photo by thisisanicephoto on Flickr (cc))

The only thing that’s going to get us out of this situation is a plan.  A realistic, reasonable plan that has defined targets for the end of each of the next five years, and strategies and tactics to get us to each.  It is only when people feel confident of the future that they will start spending money again.  A particular problem at the moment is those who have money and safe jobs, but are unwilling to spend because they fear for the future.  We must get those people spending again.

Fear is generated by the unknown.  By a lack of control.  By the feeling of helplessness.  We need to remove those with clear, concise and realistic planning for the recovery.  And we need to do it now.

The Next Leap

Education, Education, Education

The most important page in Johnny’s paper (all of which is online at the link above) is the Key Action Points.  To take a few of them in bunches:

• Launch a Cabinet endorsed drive to transform the education system as a national priority
• Speedy roll-out of a digital curriculum to provide “digital instincts” at primary and secondary level
• Integrate business context into secondary level curriculum to emphasise the viability of a career in the digital sector
• Introduce weighted marks at Leaving Certificate level for ICT relevant subjects
• Commit the funding required to provide sufficient connectivity and equipment to bring Irish schools up to the OECD average, and exempt all school ICT equipment from VAT

The education system is probably the most important factor in the medium-term changes we need to make.  But we need to make the changes now in order for them to give a return in the medium-term.  The fact that most students leave school with less than a rudimentary understanding of how even simple computer programs work is disappointing, to say the least.

If we’re to call ourselves a ‘knowledge economy’, we need to make sure that our workforce has some relevant knowledge.  Bringing computers into the heart of the classroom is one place to start.  When I studied computers in WIT in the late 1990s, I was shocked at the basics that had to be taught to business students (how to open files in Word, for example).  From talking to friends still in that sector, I’m told the skill levels haven’t changed much.

I think we need to start off by using laptops as the primary method of course and work delivery at senior cycle (4th, 5th & 6th year) in second level schools.  This is already happening in private schools, and I’m sure companies like Dell and Microsoft would be more than happy to support a national scheme.  Microsoft would certainly love to have everyone in Ireland hugely familiar with their products rather than a competitor’s before entering the workforce.

Weighting marks at Leaving Cert for relevant subjects is also something that will have to be considered.  Either that, or alter curricula.  It takes far more work to get a decent grade in Higher Level Maths than in any other subject.  Dumbing down that course isn’t an option when we need more people with better maths skills, so let’s do the opposite – improve the return on investment for students.  This isn’t a matter of helping out those who have an aptitude for maths & physics.  It’s a matter of incentivising them to take those subjects instead of so called ‘easier’ ones (in my time, it was Geography).

The subjects, and they way they’re taught, need drastic overhaul, and it’s good to see that being identified by Johnny and his team.

Repositioning Ireland – Pick a Niche

• Brand Ireland as a Green Data Centre location
• Convene a taskforce to discuss an optimal national strategy to promote Ireland as a location for localisation services
• Global Rights Clearance Hub: i) tax deductions could make Ireland an attractive location in which to vest intellectual property; ii) new tax treaties to minimise double taxation on foreign withholding tax; iii) lobbying to join the US Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH)
• Establish a multi-disciplinary group convened by SEI and SFI to determine whether Ireland could be a hub of “silicon offsetting” research

The Canadian Government has done some great work in creating small clusters for really ‘far out’ technologies.  Things like nanotechnology and tidal energy were picked up on years ago.  The Government invested relatively small amounts of money creating research centres at existing universities, then encouraged companies in those fields to set up nearby.  What you have now is a focus point of North America’s nanotech industry in Edmonton.  A focus of photonics companies in Ottawa.  Those aren’t focuses that would have built up naturally.  They were strategically created by deliberate Government action.

So the IIEA’s ideas here are right.  Pick a niche – it could be one of those mentioned above, or something different – and focus on that.  Put money into researching it at one of the universities/ITs.  Create the incentives for similarly-minded companies to locate nearby.  Rights clearance is a great example.  We have plenty of intellectual property expertise in Ireland, and many of them do a lot of work on that periphery that exists between the US and EU intellectual property systems.  Let’s exploit it.

Encouragement & Discouragement

It was encouraging to see Paul Rellis of Microsoft there to launch the paper.  It started off as encouraging to see Tánaiste & Minister for Enterprise, Trade & Employment Mary Coughlan there too.  Unfortunately, she failed to grasp the point of it, and went through the main elements of the paper talking about how the Government had already done them or couldn’t do them at all, at all.  In particular, she made a snide comment about proposals to change the education system – to the effect that it wouldn’t happen (paraphrased from memory: “I’ll refer that to Batt, but good luck to him”).  Very disappointing that the Government Minister in charge of that side of the economy simply doesn’t appear to get it.

Realism

Overall, though, this is a good paper.  My biggest criticism would be that, at times, it doesn’t go far enough.  But being aspirational and being realistic are two different things at times.  This is a realistic paper that shows where Ireland can improve its offering to the world quickly and, relatively, easily.  It’s something we need to do urgently.

But what’s the real situation?

In reality, the murder rate in 2008 is significantlydown on 2007.  In 2007 there were, as best as I can tell, 78 murders recorded by the Gardaí.  In 2008 to date (and it’s now past halfway through December), there have been just 46 murders.  Allowing for the year’s trend to continue for the rest of December (let’s hope it doesn’t, of course), that will still result in a 40% decrease in murders year-on-year.  So why the hysteria?

Creative Commons (by freefotouk)

The media have a lot to do with it (update: it was amusing to listen to Tom Brady of the Irish Independent on Morning Ireland on Thursday talking at length during an interview about the Howth murder about how overbearing media coverage of murders was actually responsible for the perception – what’s your job again, Tom?).  The massive amounts of print and radio coverage (TV has less time) of murders and other violent crime puts the actual statistics in the shade.

People hear about crime and particularly violent crime far more often, and in far more gruesome detail, than they do about more ‘normal’ threats, such as car crashes.  Car crashes have become ‘old news’, so to speak.

Older people, in particular, and other vulnerable members of society are being led to believe that every group of young people is a threat.  They’re told over and over again that they’re under threat, so they believe it.

We’re all guilty of misanalysing risk.  When it comes to the safety of children, in particular, people vastly over estimate the risks involved in various threats.  How many child abductions have there been in Ireland in the past ten years where the abductor and abductee were unrelated?  One – and it’s arguable whether there was actually an abduction in that case.  And yet parents won’t let their children play outside their homes.  Certainly won’t let them wander alone out of sight of the house, and many won’t even allow their children walk to school.  Bruce Schneier has written about this, and there was a good piece on the BBC website about it too.

To drill down to just one key fact – in 1970, the average British girl was allowed to roam 840m from her home unsupervised.  By 1997, that was down to 280m.  Today, it’s likely to be as far as the doorstep.  Risk has actually decreased in that time, but people’s perception is that the risk has increased dramatically.

Yes, one crime is too many.  But we have less crime today than we have had in decades.  Let’s get some perspective, people.  And I’m looking at you, journalists, to lead the charge.

This was written on Tuesday, and updated on Thursday – so apologies if 20 people were murdered on Friday morning before it was published and all my stats are wrong.  I somehow doubt it, though.

Blackberry Storm

Vodafone:

We promised that you would be one of the first to know. So here’s the news to beat the queues: the BlackBerry^® Storm^™ smartphone is launching on November 27th, purpose-built for Vodafone. Information is power and we hope this helps you snag one of these amazing devices before they’re sold out!

Vodafone.ie/BlackBerryStorm is the link.  Still no sign that they’re dumping the Paddy Tax, though.