https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/aug/03/australian-finance-department-hires-consultant-to-advise-on-hiring-consultants-in-move-compared-to-abcs-utopia
Exclusive: Department’s $32,000 contract, which comes after PwC tax leak scandal, slammed as ‘laughable scenario’
Just laughable...
As someone who has worked with councils in a technical consultancy capacity; this is not surprising. The expertise within the public sector is diminishing. The salaries are simply not high enough to warrant working there if you are a talented individual.
There are so many consultants, with a wide range of abilities and skill sets, it can be very difficult to make the best decision on who to choose, and the work doesn't stop. The public still want their "thing" done, weather it is a road build, a hospital upgraded or a park mowed.
It would be reasonable to have many of the consultants on staff, since some rolls are permanent and ongoing...a 3 year project for a new waste water treatment plant, should have a few engineers on staff to oversee the project, but usually that is also farmed out to consultants.
Unpopular opinion: I think it's perfectly reasonable to spend $32k to help you with staffing decisions. One staff member will cost much more than this so if you can identify unnecessary staff it pays for itself.
I think it's resonable to want someone to look at this. I think it's unreasonable to hire a permanent staff member to do this. A consultant seems a perfect fit, and at $32k it's probably only a month's work and not that much for a large organisation.
Happy to have my mind changed though.
However, why have staff at all?
Why should a government department have staff? I'm not sure what you're meaning.
Meaning if you are going to offload all work/decisions to consultants, including using a consultant to select consultants, why have staff, why not just have all consultants... [for clarity this is tongue in cheek]
Our local council has got itself into a right mess by overuse of consultants and now have very little "in house" talent. They get consultants to do most everything. One of the biggest issues is that there are often no local consultants or, non-local consultants that undercut local consultants, so, much of the work/money goes outside the district which further exacerbates the problem. This is not a wining situation and more often than not the end result is not what the locals want.
In my opinion, the overuse of consultants is a modern day dilemma. Very difficult to go back once you head down that path...
Consultants have a benefit in that once they have done their thing they are gone. Having everything done by consultants makes no sense because most staff need to be around full time to do the continuous work.
I have no doubt that consultants are overused, but this specific example seems to be a perfect use case for a consultant.
And once they have gone, so has their expertise, knowledge etc. If there is repeat work or follow-up and the original consultant is unavailable, there is a significant amount of repeat work and quite often rework. It's never as simple as suggested, in my experience.
I think in general you are right. But for this particular $32k contract that can't last longer than a month or two, it wouldn't take a new person longer than a month or two to catch up or start from scratch. Even if you had to redo the work from scratch every year it's still significantly cheaper than hiring a permanent staff member.
I guess what I'm saying is that consultants and contractors are so overused and so regularly a poor choice that it surprises me that they are picking on one of the few situations it makes sense. I can't believe there isn't a better example to complain about.