Finally here’s a challenge to Treasury, as guardians of the public purse. Develop a set of fiscal indicators that will allow independent assessments as to the mix and quality of government spending.

I am confident that ANZ took this into account when they created their numbers – this short write-up has been a long-time in the making and Cameron Bagrie is a very good economist.

Ultimately, I believe he would have looked at the degree of “over-lap” between departmental and non-departmental roles, and found that it was not significant – hopefully ANZ will come out and clarify their methodology over the coming weeks.

“If that was the goal, then I say far enough too, but all the ‘analysis’ in the report, based as it is on these self-serving definitions of ‘good’ frontline spending and ‘bad’ backroom spending”

I agree that some of the quotes are regrettably value-ladden, however this appears to have been in the search for explaining ideas simply rather than as a goal to mislead people.

There entire conclusion was on how we require clear fiscal benchmarks in this country, and that this was a challenge to Treasury. If the report is being taken out of context then blame should lie with the media for doing so – not ANZ for stating:

If that was the goal, then I say far enough too, but all the ‘analysis’ in the report, based as it is on these self-serving definitions of ‘good’ frontline spending and ‘bad’ backroom spending, has nothing to do with that goal, and it’s just fuel for people who do want to attack the public service – like our mate BS.

A) The report does not call backroom activities non-productive, they implicitly assume that the margin product of these activities declines more quickly

B) I can’t see where in the report they state that special needs teachers … soldiers are backroom staff – infact they mention defense as a front-line activity. As a result, I’m not certain that ANZ and the Standard are using the same staff definitions.

“Look at the report – it just assumes all frontline spending is infinitely better than any backroom spending. It’s stupid.”

My impression is that the report is saying that the marginal product of backroom staff declines more quickly than the marginal product of frontline staff. If this is the case, we would expect the optimal ratio of frontline staff to backroom staff to will increase as the public service expands – however it has decreased.

I agree that there article does not cover what would be the optimal mix – in fact they admit that several times in the report. However, as the goal of the report seems to be to challenge Treasury to create some transparent fiscal performance measures, this seems fair enough.

And, of course, it’s only the service deliverers who are actually delivering the service but back-room staff increase their productivity, and there is no examination in the report as to whether or not increased spending on back-room staff has helped boost output and whether more output for the same resources coudl have been gained by a different mix of increased spending on frontline and back office staff. Look at the report – it just assumes all frontline spending is infinitely better than any backroom spending. It’s stupid.

The Standard post by Clinton Smith aka Steve Pierson didn’t primarily critique the content of the 4 page report it attacked Cameron Bagries professionalism and his partisanship as an ANZ employee. If one believes David Farrar then this is probably because the posters at The Standard are some of the very public servants whose jobs are being questioned.

The ratio of fontline to backroom staff is a bit of a sideshow distraction. As discussed above the need for frontline staff in some areas ( not police,teaching,health) is decreasing. I think the more important issue is the growth in the size of the government and the cost this has on the economy. On this:

“Essentially, the government is eating the economy from the centre, pushing wages and inflation from Wellington outwards. It is sucking in workers, office space and other scarce resources and pushing up both prices and, therefore, interest rates.”

Bernard HIckey

I agree that the appropriate definition of of ‘front-line’ services would have included any staff who monitor and look after the online systems that provide services.

However, he didn’t say that he didn’t include this type of worker. He said that any workers that were involved in the provision of services were frontline – in which case it does include these types of workers.

It would be nice to have some clarity insofar as the type of workers that were placed in certain categories, however I don’t think we can categorically say that Cameron did not include that type of staff in his analysis.

As a result, I don’t think any criticism that assumes that he did ignore this type of staff change is appropriate – a criticism based on the lack of clarity in data sources may be appropriate, however they were more than willing to admit these faults in their document.

For example if you look at the banks themselves, the number of frontline staff has been diminishing markedly over the years. The frontline has been steadily diminishing because more of the information has put on to the web. I seldom go into a bank except to put PIN numbers on cards. The frontline now effectively includes the people who deal with my BankMail on the website, the people who add functionality to their website to allow me to put direct payments without even talking to anyone, the people I talk to to organize cards and loans, etc.

Yet by Cameron’s analysis these would not be ‘frontline’ staff. Yet they provide direct service.