i think it is better than when it is was in the 80s before the outsourcing started. There were some horror stories we heard about projects that were never completed and went around in circles.
Definite improvements from those days and there are some quite big and sophisticated systems around. Management and control can be quite poor. There are also some outstanding public service managers who make things happen - you can see the difference in their areas. Sometimes a big outsourcer will win a major project and staff it with low quality people to maximise profits - just an accident waiting to happen.
I don’t think it is about privatising or not privatising but more about control - even where you have a project totally outsourced you still have to make sure they are delivering as promised. For all that there are penalties put into contracts, I can count on one hand the number of times there has been any comeback for stuffing up a project.
After 30 years working as an IT contractor in the public service and then supplying people in my business I had my “good” and “bad”. departments. Defence and ATO were usually just plain bad - the culture never improved Immigration and Customs (now combined) usually did a good job of managing their IT. Socials was OK in the early days but since becoming part of the mega human services has very much lost its way.
Where privatising has worked, is that it has attracted a skill set to Canberra that they just couldn’t get, although that has watered down over the years, as public servants swap to be contractors, so you just pay more for the same people. I suppose you could argue without the ability to pay them more, they would leave and go to private enterprise in Sydney.
One thing I have noticed is that a public servant who becomes a contractor generally develops a better work ethic. Not always true of course. The better managers will ensure that they get rid of any contractors who aren’t delivering, but that doesn’t always happen either.
You also see jobs for mates and rates for mates. We had one person we put into a position who was being sold for around $100 per hour. Within a few years they had managed to get that rate doubled. Just insane.
