About 150 of the top civil servants are due to become the core of a new Senior Public Service, which will see senior positions awarded on the basis of aptitude and education, writes Gerald Flynn

WHILE THE focus of attention on the public sector has been on the likely consequences of the report by UCD economist Colm McCarthy into public service numbers and expenditure, moves had already been afoot to improve the management of our public services.

About 150 of the top civil servants are due to become the core of a new Senior Public Service (SPS), which will provide the management elite not only for government departments but for local authorities, health services and hundreds of State agencies.

No longer should profiles of senior managers describe “Mary as a lifer in the Department of Justice following three years as a higher executive officer in Agriculture”. Instead, a cadre of about 1,000 elite managers will move throughout the wider public sector and, sometimes, even in or out of private firms, if the SPS gets off the ground next year.

The plan is to implement the recommendation made a year ago in the OECD review of the Irish Public Service that we should have a special higher echelon of public managers comparable to the graduates of École Nationale d’Administration (ÉNA).

This was a French post-war initiative to clean up and democratise France’s public sector senior management, with an elite based on aptitude and education. Much of its annual postgraduate output of roughly 100 later comprise many of the most senior people in public administration and politics in France and, increasingly, in other continental states.

Ireland’s ambitions are a bit more modest and centre on improving public service performance by getting out of the straitjacket of interdepartmental promotions where, traditionally, Department of Finance mandarins secured the plum positions.

Some of those who were not likely to make the first division were encouraged to join various State agencies, whether or not they were suited to the position or had relevant knowledge of that sector.

The more salient of these malpractices were addressed by forming the Commission on Public Service Appointments and introducing some more transparent recruitment practices. But the problem remains of senior officials tied to a particular sector, which inhibits the kind of movement one finds in private companies and enterprises.

This top layer included some of the strongest opponents of decentralisation, as some feared that isolation in Mullingar, Mallow or Manorhamilton would be an effective end to their careers.

The new Senior Public Service could extend to 750 civil servants above Principal Officer level and hundreds of other managers in the HSE, local authorities and State agencies.

The theory is that they would be moveable both between regions and between sectors, so that a civil engineer might be running a tourism agency, or a town planner a community health region. Given encouragement and appropriate leadership training, it is hoped management talent comes to the top irrespective of earlier career choices and professional routes followed at third-level.

Related to this are the current moves to offer early retirement to public sector officials over 50, but experience shows that such redundancy schemes often lead to the loss of some clearly talented and efficient people.

The “nine-to-five – I’m here for life” brigade is unlikely to rush to explore other opportunities in an era of double-digit unemployment in the private sector.

Six months ago the advisory group on implementing the OECD’s proposals opted for the idea of a new Senior Public Service management elite, which was hardly surprising, as most of them were already in, or had recently left, its potential ranks.

Nonetheless, given the recent exposure of management competencies in other parts of the economy, especially in finance, the public service might be as well off to develop a cadre of more mobile talent, assuming that they also retain a culture of commitment to real public service – serving the citizens in a vibrant republic.

Some public servants in the 50-plus category may take a hint from the Public Service Task Force suggestion that: “The public service needs to ensure that careers of senior managers are planned on a system-wide basis; that potential leaders are identified early in their career and given a range of work placements and training opportunities to assist their development. This will also ensure that there is a strong mobility at senior levels, not just on promotion but also laterally.”

Doesn’t sound as if they are thinking of too many individuals in their mid-50s being developed for this new super public servant league.

All going well, this initial SPS should be up and running by the end of 2010, according to the task force implementation group. It implies a streamlining of all employment terms and conditions and pension entitlements across the public service, at least for the more senior of the 350,000 employees who enjoy public service status.

This is all a long way from the guarantees secured just five years ago by health board staff with the formation of the Health Service Executive that they would not have to relocate between offices in the same locality.

The idea behind the new senior management corps is to “send a strong, highly visible signal of government’s intent to promote a cultural change within the public service”, according to its promoters.

Initial proposals are somewhat modest, in that the SPS ranks will initially only include about 150 who hold secretary or assistant secretary general positions. That’s the easy bit. Getting to grips with the ever-changing assistant-director designations and shifting regional roles and responsibilities currently stifling the HSE will be the real challenge.

It is all still a long way from the French-style ÉNA and its alumni cadre of énarques who became famous for their techno-arrogance. Shades of a similar approach appeared in the Irish public service during the initial attempts at public sector modernisation in the early 1990s, adapting initiatives from New Zealand and Britain.

Another French public service innovation perhaps best curtailed is that of pantouflage, whereby senior public servants migrate to the private sector – often to finance houses and multinational corporations – for a few years to acquire private wealth. We have had a few examples already in Ireland, and it is interesting to look closely at the formative careers of some of those who played a role in our banking collapse.

The current crisis in public finances provides an opportunity to really push integration. The decision of the senior-layer Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants not to back the wider trade unions’ proposed industrial action over pension levies and charges may indicate that the up-and-coming talent appreciate that there has to be a better way of ensuring integrated management competencies in the interests of all citizens.

But the new management elite is just an initial step. The overall ambition is, by the end of 2011, to “implement measures to dismantle barriers to a unified public service labour market” at senior management levels.

Since it took the best part of five years to persuade medical consultants to take on clinical manager roles, this is an ambitious target, but a time of crisis may well be the right one in which to do it.

Gerald Flynn is an employment specialist with Align Management Solutions in Dublin