Oh Dear - The Civil Service doesn’t grasp Parkinson

Every government tries to hack back at the Civil Service. Given that every government does try to hack back the Civil Service then, according to the media aimed at the Civil Service, this proves that hacking at the Civil Service doesn’t work:

“Nobody serious can believe – given years of austerity – that the civil service is entertaining large numbers of people who are not meaningfully contributing”

That is to get the situation, as the vernacular goes, arse about tip:

If death and taxes are the certainties of everyday life, civil service efficiency must be one of the certainties of government policymaking. Every government tries to find ways to drive efficiencies in the service and so the latest diktat that 15% admin savings need to be found is no surprise (although this is somewhat earlier in the parliamentary cycle than we might usually see such plans). So if every government tries it, surely that suggests that it doesn't work? And what impact is it likely to have on policymaking?

This is to fail to grasp the insight of that Great Commentator on bureaucracy, C Northcote Parkinson. As we’ve pointed out before:

There is no measurable output therefore a bureaucracy cannot be measured by output. Therefore the measure of success becomes growth in the bureaucracy. More people, more layers, more budget. No one would be spending more on an organisation, have more people in the organisation, if it were not a successful organisation. Therefore that more is being spent upon more people is proof of the success, right?

This then leads to a major, possibly even the main, job of a manager in a private sector organisation. Relentless fighting back against that expansion of the paper shuffling and administration. Those who don’t do that go bust and the Invasion of the Clipboards is dealt with that way.

Government bureaucracies do not go bust - well, not until they parastise out the entire society, as with those wasp pupae that eat spiders. Therefore the job of politician is not, as they all think, to dream up new things to employ more bureaucrats to do. It is, instead, to provide that slashing and burning that every bureaucracy requires. Ministers should glory, revel, in firing people. Simply because there is no other form of fightback possible in the public sector.

Bureaucracy just grows, like Topsy, because that’s the nature of the beast that is bureaucracy. Hacking back at it is not an event, something done when all else fails. It’s a constant task, as with pruning in a garden. The job is never done simply because to even be able to stand still takes vast effort. Even if yesterday everything was as efficient as possible by tomorrow there will be waste again, probably by lunchtime today.

Hunting efficiency gains in the Civil Service is not some occasional task to be done when all else fails. The constant search for it is simply the necessary good management of the system itself.

Tim Worstall