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.

The Irish Times report is particularly strange, given that they don’t appear to have even gone to the bother of getting the current situation right, never mind what’s proposed (trade unions already ‘opt-in’ to affiliation with Labour and can choose to leave any time they like; and there’s no block votes either on the NEC or at Conference).

In terms of what is coming up, we can only speculate.  There were two sizeable papers published in the run up to last year’s National Conference in Wexford.  One was by ATGWU (written, I believe, by super-blogger of the political-economic variety, Michael Taft, along with many others), and the other by Aidan O’Sullivan (I was a co-author of that one, along with James Doorley, Andrew Montague and a few others). The two had many points in common – the biggest being that Labour’s organisational structures need significant change if they’re to meet the challenges of the current political era – as well as a few where they differed – like links with the trade unions.

I don’t think that anyone denies that Labour is stuck in a rut of sorts.  Having returned almost exactly the same result nationally in the last three General Elections, despite running increasingly professional campaigns and being up against very different situations each time, the Party hasn’t moved an inch at national level.

Meanwhile, in the cities at least, it’s made leaps and bounds at Local Authority level.  Coming out of the first Council meetings after the 2004 Local Elections, Labour held the mayoralties in all four Dublin Councils, and either mayoral or deputy mayoral offices in virtually all other city councils around the country.

Looking at what the 21CC is likely to report, I think we can expect significant movement one way or the other on the trade union link.  I’m personally in favour of removing the formal link (and the tiny amount of direct funding that comes with it).  By rights, Labour and the Trade Unions should agree about 90% of the time anyway.  Where they don’t, the trade unions are probably wrong.

Eamon Gilmore TD

We can also expect organisational changes.   The branch structure doesn’t work in all areas, and has already been superceded to some extent by the options of holding Ward meetings (“Divisional Councils) instead (based on Local Electoral Areas).  Many members have no real links to their branches, and don’t engage on a locality basis, but rather on an issue or sector basis (e.g. women’s rights, youth issues, etc).  The NEC, which is far too large to operate effectively in its current form, will have to be slimmed down.  And the regular duplication of duties between the NEC, the policy committee and the Parliamentary Labour Party needs to be addressed.

The final report, if ratified by the National Executive Committee, will be put to a Special Conference to be held in Kilkenny at the end of November.  While it will be boring for anyone but the most extreme of political hacks outside the party, it will be riveting viewing for those on the inside.  No matter what the content of the proposals, there will be some within the party who will oppose it.  Equally, there will be some who will laud it as the greatest piece of political organisation ever.  The middle ground will likely favour it as the wish of a relatively new Party Leader.

This is Labour’s chance to set the structures that will allow it advance in Ireland.  This is Eamon Gilmore’s opportunity to truly lead the party into the next series of elections.  And if anyone mentions the word “New” with a capital ‘n’, they’ll be turfed out of the room.

For the record, the author has not yet seen a copy of the draft report at the time of writing.  If someone would please forward one, he’d be most grateful.