Drummond's not the only one who's suggested that clear-cutting the public service isn't the best way to nurture sustainable growth and efficient service delivery.
The Mowat Centre took a hard look at structural failings within the public sector and offered suggestions on how to fix them.
Through his Open By Default report on Open Government, Don Lenihan did the same thing.
The truth is that we have a oxymoronic silo-based system riddled with duplication, gaps, overlaps where title, process, position and information hoarding takes precedence over efficiency or results. Mid-managers are downloading the innovation imperative to staff, expecting them to include metrics on how they're going to think outside the box in their self-written performance reviews.
Clearly, they haven't heard of the candle problem. You can't pressure people into being innovative. You can't force innovation through competition.
Worse, a complete lack of communication flow leaves our public servants in the daily equivalent of shoveling water - they don't know what they're doing, why they're doing it or what result it's expected to have.
It should come as no surprise how heavily medicated our OPS is, but doing anything about that would mean a whole lotta culture change and a great number of entitled folk recognizing they're part of the problem.
That's not gonna happen overnight, but it won't happen at all until someone takes ownership of the problem. That ownership doesn't necessarily have to come from government.
There is plenty of money out there. More than this, there's as ridiculous an amount of inefficiency in the private sector as their is in the public sector (we won't even get started on the NFP sector). Like lighting a fire when all you want is light, a great deal of energy is being wasted to create new wealth without sufficient effort being spent on internal management.
This is particularly true where it comes to HR.
Precious little time is spent on the "onboarding" process and few employers have the slightest grasp of environmental/work design impact on productivity, presenteeism, innovation and customer experience. They just want things to work, damn it, without having to put thought into how to get the results they want.
Fortunately, there are best practices out there - people and organizations in the private sector that are adapting to the Knowledge Economy by improving how they do HR, how they consult and how they engage with their clients and the community at large.
Just imagine if there was a coalition of the willing that banded together and told government "we want to partner with you on these big, structural solutions - but we want your help, and we want to see you setting the example.
How likely is this to happen? Not overly, but you might be surprised how many willing parties there are already.
It's a good kind of problem to work on, and to gain brand from being part of.
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