PLC Bloggs

I've just been reading PC Bloggs's (hilarious) new book and reading about the bureaucracy she has to put up with on a daily basis has motivated me to say something about my experiences of public sector life... Although I can't say too much as I'm not anonymous so could get fired. I was going to dribble it with sarcasm but then I came to the unfortunate conclusion that I'm not funny.

Decision Making

In the Civil Service, no decision is taken lightly as it can have far reaching consequences. As an example of how cautious our management are, our mission statement for April 2007 - March 2008 hasn't been fully approved yet. We wouldn't have even known about it if we hadn't have had a provisional brief about it last month.

Consultancy

The opinion held by those outside of the public sector is that civil servants despise consultants and do everything they can to avoid working with them...

This is because we do.

It's not really the consultant that is the problem. It's the fact that when they are brought in to analyse a problem, they will often offer a solution that was put forward by a junior civil servant (or ten) several days/weeks/years earlier. However the consultant will be listened to because they cost in a day nearly as much as what we get in a month.

When working in IT, consultancy is often essential due to the various niche areas you uncover. Just last week I was working with a GIS* consultant who probably accelerated our project by about a month in the space of two days. Sadly we don't get to work with him very often as he's too busy doing the job he's very good at.
The problem is that increasingly more often we're getting in consultants where they aren't needed. This leads us nicely on to:

Processes

Whenever something goes wrong it is usually because of slack practices so a new process is brought in to tighten things up. Often this process will require the time of a consultant to tell us how well we're doing at adhering to it.

Processes are rigid and must be strictly adhered to. However the process itself can be changed at a moments notice via email. This is because a process control process has yet to be introduced... give it time.

Unions

I've slagged off unions before on this blog and I'll do it again. We're currently balloting for strike action so naturally I'm questioning my membership.

A union is suppose to exist to make life easier for the workers but all mine ever seems to do is make it harder. Not only do I have to give them a subscription every month but if I go on strike I lose a days pay.

The current whinge is about pay offers, redundancies and consultants/contractors. I don't agree with striking over pay on principle (you lose more than you'll ever gain) and by striking all the time we're justifying the need for more consultants/contractors.

As for the redundancy, it is ultra-vires for a union.

A union exists to make sure its members are treated fairly and legally. It has to serve the best interests of the majority of its membership. If the company is larger than it needs to be then it isn't cost effective so it endangers the jobs of ALL members. Better to lose a few jobs than all jobs.

Admittedly we're a publicly owned monopoly so we'll always be safe (This isn't necessarily a good thing) but Royal Mail are not a monopoly any more. Sadly the CWU doesn't seem to have noticed.
If they keep up their strike action they'll be throwing their customers to the (cost effictive) competition and eventually more redundancies (or possibly liquidation) will be on the cards. I used to work for Royal Mail and I never joined the CWU because I thought they were an appallingly militant bunch of lefties. Sadly the upper echelons of PCS seem to be the same.

The only reason I've kept my union membership this long is because the representation at the local level is worth having. If I have to go on strike again then I'll rethink - unless the strike coincides with my nephew's birthday as I've run out of leave for this year.

* In case you wondered, GIS is a TLA** for Graphical Information Server***

** TLA stands for Three Letter Abbreviation - without TLAs the IT industry would be staring in the face of redundancy. How else can we confuse non-IT types?

*** It basically means computerised map.