I have spent 40 years in the work place. Most of this time has been spent as an employee and a lesser part of my career has been spent as an employer. One of the fundamentals of business that I have lived by, is total (and sometime brutal and unpleasant) honesty. If an employee of my company wants to be immediately fired, lie to me or one of our customers. In my role as an employee, I have always anticipated immediate dismissal if I lied to my employer or one of my employers customers.
Thus the question that is bothering me; who is the employer and customer of government bureaucrats? In a perfect world, bureaucrats are employed by the taxpayer - and at the same time the taxpayer would seem to be the customer. After all, at least in the Federal arena, they are called public servants. Add to the mix - the worthy politician. What is the politician’s role as it relates to the bureaucrat? Is the politician a customer too? Is the politician an employer? Does the Politician have any roll?>
Locke seem to be saying they can’t be fired. How can this be?. ::hb::
If a bureaucrat is caught in a bold dishonest statement - made both to the politician and the taxpayer, and presuming there is agreement to my suggested policy of honesty, how do we fire the bureaucrat? Should the taxpayer have a roll in firing the dishonest bureaucrat?
By the way - when I say fire, I mean it. Not a transfer to another area which is out of the public eye - I mean a total dismissal for the bureaucratic gravy train - including baring receiving any ‘distance removed’ relationship.
08 Feb 2003 at 12:09 pm | #
This issue becomes even more complicated in a bureaucracy as politicised as Canada’s or PEI’s. Lying and (hugely expensive) incompetence seem to carry no penalties. The official myth, of course, is of selfless, hardworking public officials - a hangover from a day when to work in the public sector was to trade income for security. After two decades of carnage in the private sector, on a job for job basis the public sector generally enjoys much better terms of engagement at the expense of the folks working in the cold winds of the private sector. Long term this destroys economies. I once asked every British minister how many bureaucrats had been fired for incompetence over the past year. “Limited efficiency” is the term employed. In most cases the answer was none. Of course, one shudders at the brutality of companies which every year - or even every quarter - fire the 10, 15 or even 25% lowest performers, but it has to be recognised that without a mechanism to remove ineffiency, inefficiency inevitably grows. Because the public sector is not subject to competitive pressure, this Darwinian process does not apply. Humble Bub raises some interesting questions…
08 Feb 2003 at 02:32 pm | #
Then you are saying.."they can’t be fired, ecept perhaps by public pressures?”
08 Feb 2003 at 07:46 pm | #
I am not sure - that seems to be the opionion of Locke