[robertlagrant]

The problem is that the civil service is inefficient and will bloat, because the only pressure on it to not is the individual good practice of leaders. There's no competitive/market pressure on it to naturally cap spending based on value.

I agree that GDS is a good thing, and I interviewed with them a few years ago and was impressed, but there is always the risk of bloat. I wish this could be fixed. I have some ideas about a similar concept in the NHS that would require the government hiring well-paid software engineers.

[pjc50]

> there is always the risk of bloat

The fantasy lies in ignoring the same risk when it's happening in a private sector contractor, doing the same job for objectively much higher costs.

[robertlagrant]

I agree, but also a civil servant has incredible pension opportunities, and defined benefit as well, and is hard to remove if they turn out to be bad. A contractor is a fixed cost, and individuals can be rejected with far less ceremony and cost.

If the civil service could shape its workforce with individualised salaries and quicker removal due to low performance I suspect it'd be a different story. I agree that consultancies and contractors are not cheap, but they are not the root cause.

[skippyboxedhero]

Correct, the main reason why private sector is used is nothing to do with salary.

Productivity hasn't increased in the public sector since 1997 due to massive overhiring and bloat, salaries are probably 20-30% higher than they should be based upon on productivity. And the main cost, which isn't factored into the above tired lobbying arguments you read from "sources" in the Guardian, is pensions. Public-sector pensions will rise to 10% of all public spending in the near future.

This is all by intent by the way, the primary issue is that existing employees have impossibly good conditions and it is effectively impossible to reform the system in any way. So you have these people are massively overpaid by any measure screeching about private sector hiring...okay, alternative: 20-30% of workforce are sacked, pensions converted to private scheme with 2% employer contribution, stack rank every year until public sector productivity equals private sector productivity.

[forlorn_mammoth]

> Productivity hasn't increased in the public sector since 1997

Hmm, in the US the size of the civil service was roughly constant over 20 years, while the population it served grew enormously as well as the amount of service it was supposed to provide.

[skippyboxedhero]

This isn't the US. Public sector productivity output (in the UK) is measured, it isn't a speculation based upon the population.

[sillyfluke]

What you wrote has nothing to do with what the parent wrote.

>There's no competitive/market pressure on it to naturally cap spending based on value.

The parent is specifically claiming gov jobs don't allow for near market rates. That number would literally be formulated by current market pressures. If that goes lower in the private sector it will go lower in the gov sector.

For your point to be correct with respect to their specific example, you would have to claim the gov could pay £300k/year when the going market rate was £100k/year and there would be no pressure to prevent this. Whereas all it would take would be someone to ask why a run-of-the-mill programmer is getting paid 3x the market rate?

[robertlagrant]

That part was referring to the air-quotes here:

> but at least you won't have "inefficient civil service bloat" to have to manage.

[sillyfluke]

Right, but you simply stated but haven't explained why bloat is inevitable in the government except to say there is no market pressure applied in government. Whereas the parent is literally talking about employing people using market rates, an example based on market pressure.

[robertlagrant]

> you simply stated but haven't explained why bloat is inevitable in the government except to say there is no market pressure applied in government. Whereas the parent is literally talking about employing people using market rates, an example based on market pressure.

The market pressure I'm referring to isn't on salaries, it's on departments. If a department gets the same budget next year because it managed to spend it all this year - a universal truth in UK public sector then departments only ever grow.

[komali2]

Don't companies also always grow?

[robertlagrant]

No, many of them fold, and even those that don't close departments and make redundancies. Companies can only grow if they're serving their customers with value, or if someone believes that they will do in future and puts money in for a bit to get them started.

If they get things wrong by overspending or overinvesting in the wrong thing, they don't have a wellspring of tax money to keep drawing from. They have to offer enough value to not only supply the good and make a profit, but also pay taxes on that profit.

[rayiner]

As soon as you raise the pay scales to allow programmers to get paid market rates, the people whose jobs don’t command that kind of money in the market will exploit the new pay scales. In the private sector, the underwater basket weaving majors hate how much more programmers make. In the government, they’ll have the power to actually equalize that pay at the taxpayer’s expense.

[forlorn_mammoth]

> The problem is that the civil service is inefficient and will bloat, because the only pressure on it to not is the individual good practice of leaders.

repeated like a mantra.

As if megacorps somehow don't have inefficiencies. And how do we even measure efficiency?

[bit-anarchist]

You have it backwards. All governments are megacorps and have the same inefficiencies as them, plus the inefficiencies of being able legally stea- tax.

[robertlagrant]

> As if megacorps somehow don't have inefficiencies

No one is saying megacorps don't have inefficiencies.

[marcta]

Yes Minister has something about this, I seem to remember. Because the government isn't profit motivated, they are instead motivated by the size of their budget and the number of employees.