Review of government functions to be proposed
Public Service Commissioner Navy Epati has just returned from discussions with State Service Commission (SSC) Officials in Wellington New Zealand.
Epati advised the Herald on Tuesday morning that the discussions which centred on the proposed review of the public service, were fruitful. He said the SSC view was the principles set out in our legislation were fine but the legislation lacked specifics. It was a problem that our legislation had not been regularly amended to keep pace with the times. For example, in the past 15 years there had only been one amendment and that was to address an anomaly identified in 1996. A major issue was there had been no machinery of government review since 1996.
The SSC suggested there should be an all of government review (AOG) to identify what it is government should be doing. According to Epati, government needs to avoid what happened in 1996 when a large number of public servants lost their jobs. There was no immediate impact then but in latter years after depopulation, there was no local labour coming through to fill jobs which were then filled by overseas labour.
Epati said government could cut costs through rationalization for example a cut in vehicles would achieve significant savings as would an amalgation of ministries. Amalgation would reduce duplication of administrative functions. He believes it is possible to reduce the number of ministries from 13 to just 7 and utilize Island Administrations.
There was also a need, in light of the Toa Petroleum case, to look at the relationship between the HOMs and Ministers and he felt that for HOMs, there was a need for a tighter performance framework.
He said the next step was to engage two consultants through the ADB to carry out a functional review. He said it would be a 6-12 month engagement.
Herald Issue 463 10 June
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