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June 11, 2007
Andrew Podger, a former public service commissioner and head of three different federal departments, says that the current emphasis is on the responsiveness of the public service to the government. Thus we have the politicisation of the public service---the imposition of the electoral and ideological priorities of the party in power on supposedly apolitical officials---and a shift away from the classic Westminister system. Tensions between politicians and public servants are inherent in the Westminster system, a fact exploited to brilliant effect in television's Yes Minister The role of the bureaucracy is to implement the priorities of the elected government and also to use its expertise and experience to advise governments of the ramifications of their actions and to warn them off the wrong course.
However, the conditions under which departmental secretaries - they used to be called "permanent heads" - are employed, rewarded and penalised have eroded their independence and professionalism. The turning points were the introductions of job contracts for secretaries, performance-based bonuses as a percentage of their salaries and the increasing tendency to give all but "favoured" departmental chiefs contracts of three years, rather than five. these have heightened the tension between the requirements that they be both professionally impartial and responsive to government wishes. Podger puts the current emphasis thus:
the question now, however, is whether the balance has shifted too far towards responsiveness and away from apolitical professionalism and its focus on the long-term public interest. ...All secretaries are affected and they are being dishonest or fooling themselves if they deny it. They will hedge their bets on occasion, limit the number of issues on which to take a strong stand, be less strident, constrain public comments, limit or craft more carefully public documents and accept a muddying of their role and that of political advisers.
The Government decides each year whether departmental heads should receive bonuses of 20 per cent - which can be worth $60,000 - 10 per cent or nothing. It is clear that someone will not be rewarded for rightly doing something a minister doesn't like (or rightly not doing something a minister wants)?" Performance pay sends very clear messages.
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