In 2006, the Taoiseach announced a major system-level review of the Irish Public Service by the OECD. The OECD Review of the Irish Public Service 'Towards an Integrated Public Service' was published in April 2008. It benchmarked the Public Service in Ireland against other comparable countries, and made recommendations as to the future direction of public service reform. This first ever Review by the OECD of the Irish Public Service is a comprehensive assessment of the Irish Public Service which confirms the many strengths of the system and identifies challenges which need to be addressed.
Main Findings and Recommendations of the OECD Review of the Public Service
The main finding of the OECD Report, Towards an Integrated Public Service, is that while the numbers employed in the Irish Public Service has increased significantly, such increases were from a relatively low-base, and general government employment in Ireland is relatively low among OECD countries. It is significantly less than the level of public employment in Norway, Sweden, France, Finland and Belgium.
While expenditure on the Public Service has increased substantially in the same period, much of these increases have reflected a need to play catch-up from historically low levels. Even when factoring in infrastructural investment, Ireland has the third smallest total public expenditure as a percentage of GDP, (third to Korea and Mexico), and this figure has decreased over the past ten years. In comparison with other OECD countries therefore, Ireland has been able to deliver services with a Public Service that is relatively small given the size of the economy and labour force.
While the Irish Public Service has created structures and systems to enable cooperation and coordination, it remains segmented overall, leading to sub-optimal coherence in policy development, implementation, and service delivery. With policy becoming increasingly more complex and diverse, if the Public Service is to become more responsive to meeting expectations and achieving broader societal objectives, the OECD recommends thinking about the Public Service as a more integrated 'system'. Rather than creating one super-structure however, this instead means getting people within the different elements of the Irish Public Service, to work in a more consistent, coordinated, networked way, across the traditional sectoral and organisational boundaries. Achieving an integrated Public Service will require targeted actions in a number of areas:
- improved performance dialogue is needed to address fragmentation and disconnects between Departments, their Offices and agencies, and other Public Service actors;
- the use of networks to bring together relevant actors from across the Public Service needs to be expanded;
- performance measures need to look at outcomes rather than inputs and processes, and increased flexibility is needed to allow managers to achieve those outcomes;
- budget frameworks are needed to facilitate prioritisation and reallocation of spending;
- a renewed emphasis is needed on the role of ICT and e Government in strengthening information sharing and integrated service delivery;
- greater mobility is needed to help develop and broaden the skills and competency base of staff.
In support of this, a stronger role is needed to lead and support change, particularly through the creation of a Senior Public Service, a high-level management cohort with members drawn from the senior ranks from across the broad Public Service, and through the development of a more strategic leadership role for the Centre (Department of the Taoiseach, and the Department of Finance).