Hmm...
I'm wondering where the accountability is for the senior execs who covered
up the Ford/Bridgestone efforts for a half dozen years, hundreds of lives
and thousands of injuries; or the accountability of the tobacco execs.; or
PG&E (Erin Brockovitch); or the wonderful folks who brought Minimata disease
to Japan; or John Roth of Nortel who rather casually it seems destroyed the
pension hopes of half the Canadian population while making sure that his own
stock options were secure...
I've had my own irritations with Canadian (and other) public servants over
the years, but I'm trying to think of the numbers of the execs. from any of
those companies I mention above whose behaviour was as commendable as the
senior Ontario public servants who either resigned or put their careers on
the line in opposing 'E Colli' Harris' dissection of the commendable
traditions of Ontario public enterprise.
Mike Gurstein
----- Original Message -----
From: "Keith Hudson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2001 11:33 PM
Subject: Accountability
> I've been desperately trying to get back to answering postings by Ed
Weick,
> Tom Walker and others of the past week or so but have been too busy.
>
> But there is one point I'll make separately here before pushing off to
> hospital for my daily X-ray session. This is about the accountability of
> those responsible for important services.
>
> Very briefly, here's the background. In the UK we have four severe crises
> -- the railways, foot-and-mouth disease, the National Health service, and
> State Education. All of them are either caused or exacerbated by
> incompetent management. The first is a (recently) privatised service, and
> the others are State run, each with large civil service departments.
>
> I won't go into details of any of these crises, save to say that
> public/consumer opinion is worked up about all these to a degree which I
> haven't observed before in the last 50 years of taking an interest in
these
> matters. Every day in the papers, radio and TV there is intense discussion
> of the deficiencies in each case.
>
> The big difference is in accountability.
>
> In the case of the railways, journalists and commentators regularly grill
> the managers of Railtrack (the "master" system which supplies the track
and
> signalling to the other regional operational companies) on matters of
> safety and bad timetabling. That is, it is those who are operationally
> responsible who are questioned. And they are questioned rigorously,
> sometimes mercilessly.
>
> In the case of the others, it is Ministers, Junior Ministers, and other
> Government spin doctors who are questioned. These people, of course, are
> not operationally responsible. To a lesser or greater degree they are
> constitutionally responsible but they have no clear idea of what the real
> management issues are. They are at least one remove from the system.* The
> people who really run these systems -- the senior civil servants -- are
> never questioned. They refuse to to speak publicly.
>
> In fact, "refusal" is too strong a term for this practice because it is
> never disputed. Quite simply, this has been the policy of the senior civil
> servants for over 100 years ever since the formation of the civil service
> as a unified power bloc. (Middle and junior administrative ranks don't
dare
> give their opinions in public, of course, because they have had to sign
> secrecy documents when appointed and can easily be dismissed.)
>
> That's all. I will attempt to discuss this matter in a little more detail
> in replying to Ed Weick's message of 28 June (Re: Shorter Reply . . . )
> later today.
>
> Keith Hudson
>
> P.S. *Here's a little story that illustrates this. Twenty years ago, when
> my home town, Coventry, faced an employment/industrial crisis (which
> subsequently deepened and didn't start to lift for another 15 years) I put
> forward some ideas for a Coventry Investment Fund to the Council. I was
> actually invited to speak to the small, but important, policy-making
> committee of the Council. Although I received the support of Coventry's
> Chief Economist who also attended, I didn't get anywhere in persuading the
> Councillors to initiate such a Fund. (My proposal envisaged a Fund similar
> to the Boston Investment Fund, and would have involved the University of
> Warwick also.) (The latter actually started the first "Science Park" in
the
> country seome years later, very similar to part of what I was proposing.
> But I had no direct inputs to this, so I don;t take any credit. It was
more
> likely to have been an idea that was in the minds of many others besides
> myself.)
>
> However, one of Coventry's MPs, himself a past member of the Council, had
> also attended, and suggested that I should speak to senior civil servants
> at the Department of Industry. As he was Junior Minister at the
Department,
> this was an opportunity I couldn't resist, so he fixed up an appointment
> and a few weeks later I travelled to London and turned up at the House of
> Commons, met the MP and we set out for the Department. . . . . . Except
> that he didn't know where it was!!!! True, the Department of Industry --
> huge, of course -- is/was located in many different buildings in London
and
> he was not to be expected to know it all. The Junior Minister had been
> given the names of the senior civil servants we were to see (those with
> responsibility for regional indsutrial policy) but he had never met them
> before! He suddenly realised that he didn't know where their particular
> "sub-department" was. It took several phone calls before we finally set
out
> for the right place. (Needless to say, I got nowhere with the civil
> servants either and Coventry continued to descend into recession.)
>
> I am sure that my MP friend was not an exception. This story illustrates
> that even Ministers know little about the workings of the Departments they
> are supposed to be responsible for and yet have to answer for when
> questioned by journalists, etc.
>
> KH
> ___________________________________________________________________
>
> Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org>
> 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
> Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727;
> mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> ________________________________________________________________________
>
