[Kharon]

That’s a Choc Frog.

Good article from Burton.  At least one Mandarin is worthy of the name.  

This may seem administrative trivia in the scheme of things, but it is symptomatic of a culture and mindset that pervades the middle band of the bureaucracy. Caught between a highly risk-averse senior executive group and a phalanx of processes, systems and faux reporting, this middle group are not trusted enough to get on with their work. This is exactly what Louise Hand’s video identified.

After the 2013 National Commission of Audit noted how weak the Commonwealth’s reporting and accountability system is, the Department of Finance has done a lot of work to rejig the public reporting system. But in several months we will yet again see truckloads of printed annual reports littered around Parliament House. The waste of tax money producing glossy print reports for 900 agencies is symptomatic of a system moving snail-like into the digital world. At a time where we have the capacity to deliver real-time metrics across government through agency websites, endless hours are devoted to self-promoting reports that are read by virtually no one.

This system design issue is a central agency challenge and with some rare exceptions, I am simply not seeing the sort of deep policy thinking needed to both challenge and drive the fundamental change the system needs, if it is to be effective and relevant in this next era

If the cap fits.....

Not that any of this could possibly apply to our ‘regulator’; Oh no.  We have three perfect examples of how a ‘department’ should be run.   ASA perfection in airspace management; ATSB the envy of the worlds accident investigate bodies and last, but not least our very own CASA; leading the charge toward – where was it again? I forget…

Toot toot.