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Mover Mike is proud to host Carnival of Liberty X. Please keep in mind we have lost contact with one of our own Life, Liberty, and Property members, Kevin Boyd of the

I’m thinking of Capita as an example. It’s one big huge company that seems to have previously been a chunk of the Civil Service, and which, despite numerous documented examples of sheer incompetance, keeps winning contracts for various “admin” like roles (TV license, congestion charge, CRB etc.) It appears to keep winning such contracts because it has no real competition. The end result appears to be that we’ve made private a section of the government, which has resulted in huge profits, a modest pay cut of normal employees, and a complete lack of any democratic accountability.

What’s really needed is lots of smaller companies competing for government contracts. We simply don’t have this, and I’ve no idea how this result could be achieved.

Fourth Generation Warfare is connected to the idea that the state no longer holds a monopoly on armed violence – often used in connection with terrorism.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/lind/lind26.html

and:

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2004/05/4gw_fourth_gene.html

Clearly you’d expect me to protest that many companies working for government seek to deliver value for money. I’d also argue strongly that there’s an element of the public service ethic which has, in some cases, leached into the private sector and that many companies and individuals working indirectly for public money seek to deliver public benefit for its own sake, rather than solely because a job well done will lead to more work.

I certainly don’t dispute, though, that there’s a lot of bad work done for public sector clients, through incompetence and sometimes even through design: why solve the problem at the first attempt when you can create work for your company and yourself for years to come?

The main problem in my opinion though is the way in which government employs and manages private sector organisations. Firstly, expertise is purchased on a contract basis so that arses are covered; when problems emerge officers can point to decisions being shaped by the consultants’ advice. Secondly, projects are poorly specified with the client not really sure what precisely is required, as seems to happen time and again on large scale IT projects. Thirdly, politicians and senior officers don’t trust the advice or proposals offered by their staff, instead seeking outside validation from companies able to market ‘solutions’.

I don’t know what the answer is but I wonder whether if departmental heads and other senior civil servants were employed on generous short-term rolling contracts we might start to see some improvement on the current situation. The brain drain from public to private sector might be reversed with private sector commercial savvy employed in the interests of the country (or county, or district) rather than in the interests of shareholders, perhaps leading to better management of public money when it’s spent on privately supplied goods and services. And if contracts genuinely were short-term we might start to see true accountability rather than the current position where a job in government is almost the last place where you can expect it to be a job for life.