Key & English have declined an offer of a live chat with Herald readers.
Missed this to get it out in time for David’s chat. But thought the pattern of the skipper skipping possible hard questions is instructive.
Red Alert
Archive for the ‘National Library’ Category
the leader of the national party even hiding from granny herald live chat
Posted by Trevor Mallard on October 31st, 2011Guyon Espiner on state sector reform
Posted by Grant Robertson on March 10th, 2010Guyon Espiner has blogged on the proposed state sector restructuring. While I don’t agree with everything in his piece it is great that he has taken the time to actually analyse the proposals.
Change should not be confused with progress. Any employee who has gone through a company restructuring exercise knows that. Most workers have a story about the bright spark in management who pulls various parts of a company apart seeking greater efficiencies only for the next boss to take the helm and put them back together again. The result is plenty of upheaval and little gain. I wonder if the latest state sector reforms might end up being a little bit like that.
That is definitely my view of the proposals around Archives New Zealand and National Library. Whatever minimal cost savings might result, the upheaval will outweigh it. Moreover, can anyone in the government actually say that the two organisations are not working efficiently? They have both had top notch audit reports for the last few years. The people who use the services of the Archives are delighted and believe it has never been working better.
This really does feel like National is doing this because they want to be seen to do something in the state sector. Lets be clear, I support finding efficiencies in the public sector. Sometimes that might mean shared services, common procurement, and even structural change. But the approach National is taking is ad-hoc and seems to not take into account what agencies actually do.
Archives and the National Library might not fit into a narrow view of what is important in terms of public services. But they are the guardians of our history, and in Archives case a key part of our transparent and open government. They deserve better than being pushed back into Internal Affairs.
