blogcutter (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
blogcutter) wrote2013-06-03 10:57 am
blogcutter) wrote2013-06-03 10:57 am
Entry tags:
Whatever happened to the music teacher, the librarian, the statistician and the other professionals?
In 1999, during my dad's final illness, he asked me if I was still working for the government. When I assured him I was, he said something like "That's good. You always know you're well looked-after if you can work for government."
I used to think so too. But while I don't regret my 33-year career in the federal public service, I'm not so sure I would necessarily advise a young person today to pursue a similar career path.
I've just been reading Donald Savoie's recent book, "Whatever happened to the music teacher?" Savoie argues that efforts over the past few decades to make the public service more like the private sector have failed miserably. The easy part is changing the lingo. Public servants talk about "business lines" instead of government programs, but whatever you call them, the public and private sectors are different and always will be.
With government power now concentrated in the Prime Minister's inner circle - notably himself, his Chief of Staff and other political appointees, the Finance Minister, the Clerk of the Privy Council and the office of the Auditor General - long-cherished public service principles such as security of tenure and the doctrine of ministerial accountability via the Deputy Minister have fallen by the wayside. The cry over the past few decades has been "Let the manager manage" but as staffing has been delegated to line departments, the administrative and reporting burdens ("feeding the beast") have increased exponentially, resulting in a situation opposite to the stated intention of the reforms. Layer upon layer of managerial or head-office functions have been added, to the detriment of front-line professionals delivering actual services - music teachers and librarians, for example - and, I would add, to the detriment of numerous behind-the-scenes professionals whose work is highly specialized and critically important but which doesn't necessarily yield short-term results and "quick fixes" or enhance the public image of the government of the day.
All too often, senior management seems to believe we can just bring in the "Subject Matter Experts" and "Train the Trainer". As a colleague of mine frequently lamented, "He wants the 10-minute MLS (Master of Library Science). If the skills, talents, knowledge and experience of a government professional could be distilled into ten-minute or ten-second sound bites, one wonders what the rationale might have been for recruiting and hiring them in the first place! Moreover, with the emphasis on frugality and cost-cutting, surely it's false economy to get rid of librarians, who typically save the time and money of the researcher through their organization and knowledge of information sources, their network of professional contacts and their extensive participation in reciprocal resource-sharing arrangements (interlibrary loan, co-ordination and collaboration in bulk purchasing of resources and online subscriptions, consistent collection development policies and guidelines to avoid unnecessary duplication, etc.)
MDs, nurses and veterinary doctors are being muzzled or laid off to make way for spin doctors. Scientists are no longer able to engage in pure research; even applied research is only valued if it bolsters the party line.
Once the "music teacher" is gone, he's gone. The corporate memory has walked out the door and organizational human capital has been irreparably eroded.
Perhaps rather than letting the manager manage, we need to let the music teacher teach music, the scientist and statistician conduct research, and the librarian ply her profession. But I'm not holding my breath.
I used to think so too. But while I don't regret my 33-year career in the federal public service, I'm not so sure I would necessarily advise a young person today to pursue a similar career path.
I've just been reading Donald Savoie's recent book, "Whatever happened to the music teacher?" Savoie argues that efforts over the past few decades to make the public service more like the private sector have failed miserably. The easy part is changing the lingo. Public servants talk about "business lines" instead of government programs, but whatever you call them, the public and private sectors are different and always will be.
With government power now concentrated in the Prime Minister's inner circle - notably himself, his Chief of Staff and other political appointees, the Finance Minister, the Clerk of the Privy Council and the office of the Auditor General - long-cherished public service principles such as security of tenure and the doctrine of ministerial accountability via the Deputy Minister have fallen by the wayside. The cry over the past few decades has been "Let the manager manage" but as staffing has been delegated to line departments, the administrative and reporting burdens ("feeding the beast") have increased exponentially, resulting in a situation opposite to the stated intention of the reforms. Layer upon layer of managerial or head-office functions have been added, to the detriment of front-line professionals delivering actual services - music teachers and librarians, for example - and, I would add, to the detriment of numerous behind-the-scenes professionals whose work is highly specialized and critically important but which doesn't necessarily yield short-term results and "quick fixes" or enhance the public image of the government of the day.
All too often, senior management seems to believe we can just bring in the "Subject Matter Experts" and "Train the Trainer". As a colleague of mine frequently lamented, "He wants the 10-minute MLS (Master of Library Science). If the skills, talents, knowledge and experience of a government professional could be distilled into ten-minute or ten-second sound bites, one wonders what the rationale might have been for recruiting and hiring them in the first place! Moreover, with the emphasis on frugality and cost-cutting, surely it's false economy to get rid of librarians, who typically save the time and money of the researcher through their organization and knowledge of information sources, their network of professional contacts and their extensive participation in reciprocal resource-sharing arrangements (interlibrary loan, co-ordination and collaboration in bulk purchasing of resources and online subscriptions, consistent collection development policies and guidelines to avoid unnecessary duplication, etc.)
MDs, nurses and veterinary doctors are being muzzled or laid off to make way for spin doctors. Scientists are no longer able to engage in pure research; even applied research is only valued if it bolsters the party line.
Once the "music teacher" is gone, he's gone. The corporate memory has walked out the door and organizational human capital has been irreparably eroded.
Perhaps rather than letting the manager manage, we need to let the music teacher teach music, the scientist and statistician conduct research, and the librarian ply her profession. But I'm not holding my breath.