I’m no stranger to Machinery of Government changes. Trust me: when you’ve been in the public sector long enough, you get used to them.
But the recent MoG changes have been something else.
I’m a manager in a line agency that designs strategies and services for vulnerable people across the state. But this latest MoG seems to have gutted strategic and decision-making functions from our agency. While there have been all sorts of changes, the biggest one from my perspective is the creation of a new central agency that is empowered to dictate strategy to my agency.
Now I, and many others in the agency, have been recast as implementers of decisions made outside the agency or, at best, stakeholders advising on those decisions. Overnight, we’ve gone from being expected to create and implement high quality policy, to being expected to just follow orders. I know it’s been a trend for a long time, but we seem to have finally reached the end of that long road.
I’ve seen MoG changes plenty of times, but this new central agency is even further away from the ground than my line agency is, and front line workers already complain that we’re too far from the action.
It’s also professionally stifling. We have done, and still could do, great work in–house. I’m worried the central agency is going to make different and worse decisions based on different rules and less expertise. Policy ideas will now be prioritised and decided according to different criteria that is less directly relevant to the needs of our clients, and get politicised much earlier on, before any really robust policy work can inform it.
If I can’t make decisions within my agency that will make real change and help people, like I could before, like I signed up for, then I’m not sure what is still keeping me here. I’m starting to suspect I’d be able to create more value, with more flexibility, working in an NGO.
