Accountability and Capability

Having failed to get anywhere with the A word, we now seem to have drifted back to the C word with a number of recent events highlighting potential shortfalls.
 
Someone somewhere, possibly vaguely connected to the Harbour, have appointed someone else they feel was the best candidate available to be the new commercial director of our harbours; someone with no previous experience of harbours or anything else directly concerned with transportation.
 
Perhaps modern skills are so portable that you no longer need any actual relevant experience, just some experience somewhere, preferably with financial somewhere in the job title.
 
They clearly have no doubt that they’ve chosen the right person for the task which obviously doesn’t need the clutter of specialist knowledge of harbours. No doubt all will become clearer in time.
 
Then we have the case of the senior civil servant who honourably resigned during the fraud fiasco only to be now snapped up by Education as a consultant. No direct experience in education but that doesn’t matter as his skill set is deemed more than sufficient for the task and he’s a wonderful catch. So wonderful that Education felt it could save the cost of advertising the role and interviewing potential candidates in favour of just going ahead and appointing the chap they wanted in the first place.
 
Again, I have no doubt that he is more than adequate for the role they have in mind which clearly needs minimal knowledge of how our education system works on a day to day, or even year to year basis.
 
I would mention the questioned capacity of some of our A&E cover but of course we’re not allowed to know the true facts or even be given a comprehensive understanding of whether we’re getting value for money from the profit making private company which supplies part of our health service.
 
At least I can trust a doctor to know when they lack capability and call for back up. I just hope the back up is available in what might be a time critical period.
 
But the best example of all is left for last.
 
If you haven’t yet done so, take a read of the independent report into the fraud mentioned above. It is the latest of 12 years worth of reports highlighting the lack of capability of the State’s risk management system.
 
This report also highlights why so little has been achieve over those 12 years. Our system of government is broken.
 
I know that this is somewhat less than breaking news given the way we have of moving from shambles to shambles by way of confidentiality, secrecy, and incompetence but it’s still a little horrifying to see it written down in black and white.
 
It is my understanding that basically we have a Chief Minister with no effective power, a political centre which is run by a committee of 40 odd people, some with minimal experience of anything similar, and a permanent and professional civil service which seems accountable to nobody but themselves. On top of that we have an administration divided into self centred and self seeking departments who have no self interest in promoting anything which will diminish their empire or budget.
 
It’s a wonder anything gets done at all apart from the occasional vanity project.
 
I am sure that there is a huge degree of capability within government but fear that most of it is centred at the sharp end of things, where you do need actual and relevant experience to do your job. Once you move away up into the realms of management, the skill sets apparently become so much more portable allowing all sorts of opportunities for advancement.
 
I mean, how can you see the big picture if your mind is cluttered up with details such as specialist knowledge?
 
We need generalists. People who can be generals.
 
If we haven’t already done so, we’ll eventually end up with more generals than tanks but that will be fine because we don’t need tanks or anyone who understands tanks, or roads and road systems apparently, but that’s another story.