One of the major points to come out of the recent review of the Norfolk Island Public Service was the need to build the capacity of the Public Service to better serve both government and the community.
In so many areas the service was found wanting but most particularly in the areas of policy development, policy advice, and strategic planning. In addition, the Administration does not have a good reputation for client service, a weakness it shares with many in the business community on Norfolk.
Business owners are also patchy when it comes to business planning and in the timeliness of their responses to changing demands for goods and services, so there is some work to be done there also.
While it is understood that the Public Service review was specifically aimed at lifting the performance of public service the whole community, not just the public service, needs an investment in capacity building. It also needs to be understood that many of the skills not found in the public sector already exist in the private sector and vice versa, so there is an opportunity for some cross fertilisation.
There is cause for concern that in the next tranche of funding from the Commonwealth, resources will be focused predominantly on public sector improvement, with the rest of the community left to fend for themselves.
There also reason to believe that the Norfolk Island Government will accede to this push because of the continuing symbiotic relationship between government and the public sector and the government's poor track record in supporting the productive sector of the community, small business.
With every likelihood that the submission to the Australian Cabinet for 2012/2013 funding is close to finality, and with the strong likelihood that Canberra bureaucrats will implement what they understand, it's likely that the private sector will be forgotten again.
Lets not kid ourselves, the Norfolk Island Government and its Administration are in the scheme of things, small potatoes. The team that conducted the Public Service review is accustomed to reviewing organisations which are significantly more advanced in the sophistication of their public administration than the Norfolk Island Administration.
If the solution to filling the skills gap is to task a team of Canberra oriented bureaucrats who will arrive with an entirely new lexicon of pubic service jargon and acronyms, and courses delivered by slick corporate consultants. Then the first encounters for the Norfolk Island Administration staff will be eye-glazing experiences.......with free mints! It's important therefore that any capacity building exercises are accessible and relevant. There is some serious catch up needed to be sure, but what we don't want is a jump from where we are to the APS's next best thing.
It's a given in all this that Norfolk needs to reconstruct the private/public sector activity mix. In our new paradigm the only sustainable approach is a contracting public sector and an expanding private sector.
It follows then that capacity building needs to occur widely throughout the community with less emphasis of the development of skills that are more aligned to the demands of a less relevant public sector and more aligned to the needs of a tourism focussed service economy.
To date the funding from the Commonwealth has done little to improve the lot of the private sector and it would be a serious mistake for the Commonwealth to support a strategy that perpetuates the public private, them and us feelings that exist in the Norfolk Island community right now.
A strategy that delivers community capacity building regardless of employer, that deals with career aspirations for locals both on and off Norfolk and that enables people to move from public to private sector and vice versa, is what is called for.
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