Constructing the Craft of Public Administration by Christine Shearer

Author:Christine Shearer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030818968
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

While current Departmental Secretaries hold a different view, notably that their advice continues to be frank and fearless, they are not articulating a diminution of the provision of frank and fearless advice as to do so would be to admit weakness. Advice offered to ministers by current Departmental Secretaries recently indicates an apparent risk to their continuing employment where advice is deemed controversial for the government (see Bettles, 2013 re termination of contract by the Abbott led Australian Liberal National Coalition Government in 2013 of former Departmental Secretary of Immigration and Citizenship Andrew Metcalfe).

Another idea copied directly from the private sector was the introduction of corporate boards to some statutory agencies. One Departmental Secretary commented on the potentially catastrophic consequences associated with the ill-fated introduction to public sector statutory authorities of quasi-corporate boards. The quasi-corporate board became the main body with accountability for statutory authorities reporting to government. However, such quasi-corporate boards struggled to understand their core charter. Furthermore, quasi-corporate boards did not have the powers of a private sector corporate board. They could not appoint or dismiss the ‘Chief Executive’, nor could they set the Chief Executive’s remuneration. The line of accountability from the quasi-corporate board to the government was unclear, especially because the Chief Executive was appointed by the government and was directly accountable to the Treasurer, as were the quasi-corporate board members: ‘quasi boards were really an awkward animal with statutory authorities, because it was not quite clear what the line of accountability was from the quasi board to the government’ (19:2d). There was a lack of clarity or a ‘dissonance’ in the structure or line of accountability of the board (as described by the HIH Insurance Royal Commissioner at the time) (Uhrig, 2003) (19:2). It was also unclear who was accountable to government in the event of errors. Instead, what was realised and required was that there needed to be a direct line of accountability between the head of the statutory agency and the political process. For public administration the quasi-corporate board idea was a temporal aberration with unintended outcomes. The boards were eventually dismantled.If I can be crude, the chief the Head of Treasury at the time said, “Look, when things go wrong we just don’t know whose backside to kick”. It wasn’t quite his phrase it was cruder. With the structure we have now there is only one backside in the frame and that’s mine. (19:2)

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.