Consultants
Yep - far too many consultants working in central government, especially the DWP. But who engages them ? The civil servants.
In 'industry', there is usually a single programme sponser who signs the cheques for the snake oil salesmen, usually high up the corporate food chain. Contrast with the public sector, where the programme sponsor is comparatively low down the organisation. His/her programme impacts many other business areas, but he/she cannot direct whether a particular course of action will be adopted, instead he/she has to build 'consensus' among the stakeholders. This means interminable steering committees, working groups, end user fora etc. etc. which fill a civil service middle manager's day.
Then there is 'Ye Olde Trippe to Jerusalem', when your sponsor get promoted, or the department concerned plays '52 Card Pick-up'. I did a small chunk of work at the FCO a few years ago, cost the taxpayer small beer (GBP 60 K). Come the time to hand over our recommendations, lo and behold Fred had gone upwards, to be replaced by George, who file 13'ed our report. One month later, another set of consultants was engaged to do the same piece of work. Now either our work was naff, in which case why pay for it or else it was at worse fair to middling, in which case why start over again ??
Individually, most civil servants are pleasant individuals who work hard and have a deep sense of public accountability. Many, however, are simply always busy doing make-work tasks for other civil servants and a significant proportion duplicate the work of colleagues three doors down the corridor. Those working at the sharp end in 'delivery' could do without half the un-qualified bean counters who spend their days consuming the odd small equatorial rainforest on meaningless management reports and filling intranets with rubbish that nobody actually reads. It's cultural and institutional and I'm sure your missus struggles against it every day.
If 'management' has a difficult decision to make, it'll get the consultants to do the deed and take the blame. If 'management' knows its existing staff are not capable of performing a complex task. instead of sacking them or shifting them sideways it'll get the consultants in. Supply and demand says that there will always be snake oil salesmen for those that are foolish enough to want snake oil; sometimes snake oil actually works !
If the civil service employed professionally qualified procurement specialists who could buy from consultancy firms using properly drawn up contracts then EDS would be screwed on this debacle and compelled to rectify programme failure or lose a shedload of money. Alternatively, they could use the money to recruit their own competent staff to do the work in-house. It's far easier, though, to blame the consultants if something goes wrong. Slopey shoulders, or what ?
In theory, I should be praying for Gordon Brown to get into No 10, as that would be my gravy train for another few years. As it is, I can't wait to see the back of the lot of them. Small government, fewer consultants, lower taxes.
FP