Public service needs changes

I COMMEND Department of Personnel Management (DPM) secretary Taies Sansan on the corrective measures taken under her administration.
It is imperative that every government agency cooperate in this regard.
It is well overdue and every head of agencies know too well that the exorbitant cost of running the public service is a concern to the national budget.
To pave the way forward, I think DPM could begin with structural audit into the existing structures of each government agencies to eliminate hijack cult and paralleled or duplicated structures.
In my view, there should be consistency in the government agencies’ establishment structures with limited allowances depending on the agency requirements.
I think there are too many duplicated functions created by various agencies to accommodate close friends and associates.
Some are politically driven and they need to be abolished to reduce the size.
Furthermore, some of the agencies are duplicating functions, hence, undermining each other.
In the end, they are ineffective and inefficient.
On the outset, these agencies are becoming financial liabilities to the State. In some agencies, some positions are unnecessary.
Their functions can be merged and managed under one position.
If this can be corrected, the issue on ghost names in the government payroll system can be cleaned without incurring additional costs.
Another pressing issue for DPM to rectify is to protect the structure of a public service office from being hijacked by a government project.
It is becoming apparent that certain government projects have undermined and hijacked the statutory functions of some of the offices of the national public service system, hence, created parallel establishment structures and dual payroll systems.
There are many agencies, but I will give two examples only and they are the Office of Urbanisation and the PNG Civil and Identity Registry.
The Office of Urbanisation was undermined by the Ministry of National Planning, which eventually led to the abolishment of the office and displacement of staff.
DPM knew too well but allowed it to happen.
In the case of PNG Civil and Identity Registry, according to information I have and from reliable sources at the Department of National Planning and Monitoring and NID Haus, the NID project had already lapsed in December, 2016 and the project management unit was abolished in 2017.
However, DPM, with the support of Department of National Planning and Monitoring, is continuing the NID project and the worst is that DPM is managing two parallel establishment structures and paying dual payroll systems under the pretext of PNG Civil and Identity Registry.
If this information I received is valid, then the good secretary would need to get her acts together and begin with first conducting structural audit to eliminate the hijack cult and parallel structures.
Secondly, ensure all public servants are registered and issued with NID cards, make NID card one of the prerequisites for employment in the public service and use NID card numbers as employee file numbers. Thirdly, agencies that are performing duplicated functions and roles should be merged to save costs.
Finally, DPM should regulate uniform structures for all the agencies with few allowances for positions that may be relevant to suit the business requirement of the agency concerned.
It is time to act the talk.
Enough of refining and repeating the same message.

Whistle Blower