"...the job requires people who can use language not commonly used by the general public"

The job's position description (PD) is, all too often, written by members of that pretendy-profession, human resources management; people who *can't* use language properly whether it is common or not.

This is usually evidenced in the prologues to the PDs where it is clear that there is no understanding that "criteria" is the plural, and "criterion" is the singular.

Take a quick buzzword scan of any current PD selection criteria and "strategy" is popularly misused in place of "activity" or "tasks."

The malapropism de jure in PDs is "methodologies". This is an incredibly pretentious misuse of the term in place of the more correct "methods". I am convinced that there is not one public sector HR practioner who is remotely aware that "method" and "methodology" are very different animals.

The irony is that these glaring and somewhat bemusing errors appear on PDs insisting that the applicant(s) demonstrate "excellent writing skills"

George should be awarded the Sir Humphrey Appleby Award for goverment-speak!

George you are my saviour - I have been self-flagellating for 2 years in local government thinking I am the one at fault - the round peg etc... and now I read your articles and the burden of self doubt has at last been lifted. I unsuccessfully applied for govt jobs for 12 months before I bought the book on how to address selection criteria. I got the job ... but that book didn't inform me of the inner machinations that awaited me. I thought another book is required on how to unlearn the very many years of life experience, tertiary education and training in the outside world that are so wrong for the dark world of government. But in fact I am the round peg and I really don't want to fit in this peculiar microcosm of narrowness and bigotry ... so I will return to the light of the real world ... Thank you for the enlightenment.

George, not "humour" as categorised by OLO, but documented tragedy. When given the opportunity to make appointments in the QPS, I could find no suitable internal candidates. The difference was high-lighted in a meeting with departmental proponents for the Australian Magnesium project. Unable to fault analysis which showed that it was not viable, they abused my team and I as being "ivory tower" economists. I pointed out that I had worked for the UK's Central Electricity Generating Board, my economic modeller had worked for BHP steel and my financial analyst had been a project analyst for CRA copper - highly relevant experience. "What's your experience?" I asked. All were career-long "public servants". But they knew how to play the game, the project went ahead (and collapsed with loss of $450m), they got praised and promoted, I got sidelined. No minister or QPS employee was chastised for the AMC outcome.

Sadly, I see this in very large companies too.
It seems that wherever the "cult of authority" is king then the limit on BS goes sky-high. Banks, the military and IT consultancies approach the level of government waste, gobbledegook and BS.
I have encountered *rare* instances of government management adequacy...but they are the exception.

HR: dismal parasite division. "human relations" indeed! They wouldn't need a special division to deal with humans if they just hired competant ones in the first place!

Faustino: You may or may not be pleased to know that in IT this sort of thing happens all the time. I've seen several hundred million wasted in projects. Companies like Telstra just swallow the loss and do it all again!

It's like working-welfare, and as others pointed out it's not just government. Elsewhere in the world can-do nations like China and India are racing ahead - Australia plays it's nationwide game of pass the parcel. Interesting times ahead when the last wrapper is pulled and we find it's empty.

I started out in this stream treating this well-known phenomenon as the bad joke that it is. I guess that's what we do when we, as individuals, can't do anything about the problem confronting us. But it is not a joke; these criminally negligent "inefficiencies" are major contributors to the current Australian/world economic malaise.

Every contributor to this stream is obviously an educated, informed and experienced person. What can we do, collectively, to overcome this problem - rather than, as I have, either bitch about it or treat it as a joke??

Doc Holliday

The tone of any organisation is set from the top. That is your answer.

Two suggestion from left field to improve things:

- outsource policy advice to provide competition; and
- slash the management overheads in all offices, especially central offices.

It is ridiculous that in central offices many jobs can have 'people management', 'liaison' or 'co-ordination' as responsibilities of the position. All that does is encourage work and responsibility to delegated endlessly.

As far as setting the bar for entry into the public service...

What, in the private sector would have to be climbed over,

in the public sector limbo dancing is the norm.....

Doc Holiday: Good points.
I think some of it is down to demographics and will solve itself when the "hump" that is dominating senior management moves on.

Some of it is down to profiteering. The banks for instance are making so much profit that efficiency is distant joke/dream. These job factories are good for jobs and investors, so why cut them back? (A. Because they are stealing resources from people and productive parts of the economy)

Some of it is due to technology and real management efficiencies. We are 80% of the way to an automated economy, so labour is really not needed in many areas that it used to be. The IT revolution has actually cut far more jobs from the economy than we see, and companies are either: a) Taking more profit by using less labour. b) Labour expands to fill the void by creating work. This is what is driving the ever-increasing meaninglessness of work.

We have seen both the massive increase in company profitability and the reduction in Labour's value in the last decade due to this "android economy" effect. The traditional "but service jobs will be created" to replace the automated jobs argument is only partially true: The value of the new jobs is significantly less than the jobs replaced, so the downward spiral continues.

Given we are stuck in the traditional Capital/Labour split, how will we deal with this? When everyone is born without the "need" to work, will we finally realise that work is what people *want* to do and they will fight for the right to be relevant to society? Will the only real jobs be decision making? How will we control that minority?
Yep, our kids will have some doozies to solve!

Cornflower - Outsourcing policy advice is a common thing in government...and results in criticism from politicians and some members of the public for spending the money externally (read, wasting the money).

I have overseen a number of such contracts and gained very good advice in a few instances. However I can count the number of good consultants on one hand. They appear to be a rare breed and often we just get drivel and end up having to rewrite the report to make it intelligible - costing you, the taxpayer, more money. Too often they have not done more than a cursory review of available information, or have obviously assigned a junior to write and research the report while charging for a senior consultant. It's very frustrating to get quotes in from the same guys who have provided really bad advice previously and wonder who to award the work to. The good ones are often so overloaded, becasue there are so few of them, that they don't always bid for work. Of course, this all takes time. Time that could have been spent developing the policy within government.

Moving departments out of the city centres, while saving money in the short-term, increases travel costs signficantly, and also increases travel times to meetings etc. In Perth, most of the major businesses are in the CBD or directly adjacent, as are all the politicians, so it would not make sense to move too many departments out. Some are already in suburban centres, but this has not proven efficient to date.

Phil Matimein

I don't disagree with you, there are many problems with outsourcing - one being that the agency can rapidly become devoid of the necessary skills to draft contract specifications, let alone manage the eventual contractor.

It is not all or nothing, I am suggesting that government contract out where it makes good sense to do so, the skills are available and value for money can be obtained. It may well be that some government agencies engage consultants at the drop of a hat and possibly because it is safer to have someone else say what they are already thinking.

There remains scope for the judicious use of contracting to obtain independent high level advice and that would seem to be still lacking at national level at least. It is a fact that in some areas there are very few experts world-wide who are at the leading edge and could inject some new thinking or solutions.