Inefficiency dividend

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Inefficiency dividend

The Australian Federal Public Service has been subjected to the so-called 'efficiency dividend' for about twenty years now. This has been something like a general and arbitrary 1% cut in funding each year for the last two decades. That makes at least 20% reduction in real terms in the value of resources allocated to sustaining some of the really vital supports of Australian democracy.

I see the results of this now in the "Sausage Factory" where I work. Training is under resourced, the quality of work is becoming harder to sustain, and there are chronic and systematic failures of communication. This makes me think of an Economics lecturer I once heard saying that he couldn't really see what 'dis-economies of scale' might be. He had talked enthusiastically about economies of scale but said he just didn't see where any real problems would come from with continuous scaling up of work organisations.

Well I think there is one word mainly which covers most aspects of dis-economies of scale: communication. That is, real communication goes down the tubes within organisations as the size and complexity of the enterprise grows beyond a certain threshold. The standard bureaucratic answer to the extra efforts needed to keep an ever growing organisation going is to major on the establishment of COMMAND and the ever more detailed management of an exponentially growing corpus of official procedures. Micro management - majoring on minutiae - seems to become an end in itself and the ever more detailed prescriptions of procedures take on the aura and gravity of the Word of God. What can common sense and community do in the face of a seemingly remorseless and unstoppable depersonalisation of relationships? They go underground that's what. Networks, in so far as any do exist, become the means for escaping from the baleful influence of the command structure rather than a natural, organic complement to official chains of command.

When communication dies in an organisation, productivity dies with it. I just wish the Prime Minister and Treasurer of this country could realise that "the fat" has long since gone, now it is just nerves and muscle that are being carved off.

1 comment:

Mark PeatyAugust 31, 2009 at 12:43 AM
An amusing thought to play with is that the concept "Whole of Government", which some politicians and bureaucrats like to fantasise about, actually entails an increase of complexity. In other words, to be successful projects created with "Whole of Government" as part of their rationale, need far more resources to make them work than the self-blinded wishful thinkers can ever realise.

In Australia the so-called "Efficiency Dividend" has eaten the W and left us with just the hole to fall into.
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A command structure is NOT a communication network.

Command structures have been around since warriors started making themselves into kings. There are many issues, and opinions can be discussed about all that.

Politely expressed thoughts and opinions on the subject are welcome here.

My main concern here is that we now live in the modern era, a new time in human history, indeed a radically new stage in human evolution. My contention is that command structures have always provided mixed blessings. The stability and security made possible by the imposition of laws and ideology of a ruling class has allowed many societies to develop in complexity and influence; "civilisation" was possible but at considerable cost.

Command structures accrue greatest benefits to those giving the commands. Throughout history command structures have served primarily as systems of control with surplus value being channelled up the hierarchies while costs associated with the creation of value were pushed down the hierarchies and out into the rest of the society and the ecology.

This, broadly speaking, has been the way of things since the advent of agriculture and the complex, class societies which it supported. For reasons which we can discuss - if anyone dares - class societies are intrinsically unstable in the long term unless they have entrenched democratic institutions and behaviours. They always succumb to civil strife and insurrection or else warfare perpetrated on neighbours and victims further afield.

The advent of scientific method is what has created the modern era. The application of scientific method and the fruits of its discoveries have put enormous power into the hands of modern people - into the hands of the "haves" anyway. This incredible transformation has only just begun really, we ain't seen nothing yet!

One of the biggest consequences of this change is that most of our old ways of doing things have to be adjusted to deal with the new kinds of situations we can find ourselves in. This can be simple and obvious but heartbreakingly traumatic for many. One example is that everybody in the world now has to use money for at least some of the important tasks of life, and most of us have to use money for nearly everything. The negative side of this is that most of us cannot decree what money is so we are constrained by the dictates of bankers, economists, entrepreneurs and politicians who often have very archaic and outmoded ideas about truth and value.

I think the economic disaster which became manifest through 2008,, and has continued so far through 2009 is clear evidence that capitalist gurus and pundits are nearly as blind and wilfully dysfunctional as the socialists they so often jeer at. A PLAGUE ON ALL THEIR HOUSES!! that's what I say!.

I believe that, if we want our species to survive, there are four fundamental ingredients necessary for sustaining civilisation in the modern era:
Compassion
Democracy
Ethics
Scientific method.

The pleasant side to this realisation is that none of this is "rocket science". When you start looking quite closely into many of the things that have been discovered about human beings, the natural environment, and about things we can make, it turns out that there is vast potential to improve the lives of everybody on the planet and have enormous fun in the process!

DAYTIME - day job or destiny?

Saturday, July 11, 2009