Politicians may come and go, but the public service is always there

The overall operational cost of this scheme which would drive up the price a wide range of goods and services, particularly utilities, is anyone’s guess.

But we can get a rough idea about how things work in the public service if we turn to the Defence Department.

This bureaucratic monolith is wrestling with a government edict to reduce its overall costs by 10 per cent within 10 years in the interests of greater efficiency.

Under this strategic reform program the department’s procurement arm, the Defence Materiel Organisation which has an annual budget of $10 billion, will need to find savings of $1 billion over the next 10 years.

To help it meet this goal the DMO has taken on an additional 250 staff, at an annual cost of around $25 million. This is on top of its existing 7,000 staff and does not include any consultants that it may require for strategic advice.

In 2008, responding to the impact of the global financial crisis, the government acted on advice from an external efficiency report by drastically reducing the reliance by its departments on outside information technology consultants.

Industry sources say that a significant shortage in private sector IT consultants has been matched by a coincidental boost in public service IT numbers.

A former head of Treasury summed it up by saying: “Politicians come and go. But we are always here.”