Friday 23 January 2009

Outsourcing the source - or how to shoot a big hole through your foot Commission style

Hello fellow b-eurocrats ! long time no see huh?!

Well I take it as it comes ... until I really get pissed off again ... and here we go !

The objective set for our beloved over bloated b-eurocracy since at least 2004 was to cut back on expenses ... while increasing efficiency ... well ...

The result is that ... they dropped salaries (for those that got in after 2004) , they eliminated almost completely the competitions aimed at hiring real public servants (permanent staff or fonctionnaires as they call them) - with the exception of those coming from the new member states (oh, yes we have to keep the quotas right!) , they increased the number of Contractual Agents (meaning, 3 years then piss-off!) and Interims (mainly secretarial staff traded through slave pushers like ADECCO Interim, Start People and others).

All these measures were of course backed by consenting "appointed for life no matter what" fontionnaires all agreeing that they might have become obsolete after all these years of painfull scratching (there are brilliant exceptions be assured) ... so they needed to find cheap (cutting back on expenses, remember?) replacements to actually do the Job while they could peacefully continue to go back and forth in corridors and up'n down the elevators day after day, till glorified pension day comes ...

Basically the numbers are reaching 50/50 in many cases ... 50% permanent staff / 50% all other types ... the differences in wages are often monstruous ... older staffers never speak about their monthly pay to newcommers... it can be easily 3x up even if they are less qualified for the job...

They have effectively created 2 distinct classes of staffers... old and new ones
The Contractual Agents that come in today most of them with one or two master degrees even PhDs having gone through hell to get in (exams have become harder and harder over the years), would get up to 3 times less than a secretary hired before 2004 ...

The absolutely disturbing coincidence is that while all these grand plans are being deployed and put to practice ... at the same time the main (I insist THE MAIN) criterion for judging the efficiency of the European Commission Services is "How Much Money" they can spend
... I mean it !

It doesn't matter on what, how, how efficiently or anything ... as long as it is gone!
Ok you need to have the paperwork right ... you cant just transfer it to your bank account ...

The reason is that if you do not spend your budget of this year, the bad European Parliament is gonna cut your allowance for next year ! and that we do not want!

YES WE CAN !! ... spend it all!! this is every European Commissioners Motto...

So on the one hand we are depleting the capacity of the public service to recruit and keep high value staff, to cut back on expenses, and on the other hand we need to spend like crazy! go figure ...

An even more disturbing trend is the outsourcing mentality. The idea is... ok ... since we need to spend... why not outsource some of the work we are actually supposed to be doing?

Bingo! for one It is very expensive (good), segundo it is very convenient (someone else is doing the job) and ... the best of it all : even if the job done is completely and utterly screwed-up, we don't care ! because it is the "oh! how incompetent!" consultants fault!!

Genius!

The problem is of course that they spend my taxpayers money to make consultants extremely rich (not the poor sod that is sent in by the firm of course ! he would get just about half or less of the money spent for him). Beyond making the consultants extremely rich, they also make the Commission incredibly poor in its capacity to build on expertise, know-how and experience ... since it is all done by externals! Commission staffers are slowly but steadily turned into external contracts handlers ...

And by the way ... what is the main concern of a large portion of consultants ? (not all I am sure) To stay on milking the EU-COW as long as they can ... how can they do this ? by messing things as much as posible so that they can continue working on it... like for ever! And it happens! Often the issues are so technical (in particular concerning IT) that there is no-one in the directorate able to say if what is proposed as a sollution is right or wrong ... the blind leading the blind! and the one eyed consultant leading the whole lot of them... dancing in circles around nice piles of money ... (nice image huh?)

This is a good explanation of the real mess in which the European Commission is (among all others) in terms of IT, Information systems, document management and so on ... (see other posts)

It is a pityfull situation I tell you ! The Commission (i.e. at the end... an important part of my Government) is increasingly being run by Consultants ...

Ok lets not exagerate there are of course very bright staffers, very hard working dedicated and consentious fonctionnaires that have accumulated enormous expertise and know how over the years ... and are doing a great job ... and I can say it ... deserve every last peny of my tax payers money ...

But still ... that is the way things go ...

Oh yes! I forgot the Commission Decided that 2009 is the year of "Creativity and Innovation" ... enjoy!