ONe significant problem with the public sector is the introduction of external consultants and procurement/commissioners, in general on high salaries with no idea of what the services are trying to achievce. They create new 'sexy' ways of working………….see the guardian society yesterday for social enterprise guru using corporate terms for a simple community based solution. Rubbish and tosh introduced as effective and creative management, just some freeloaders carpet bagging imho. I see expensive companies fleecing councils and NHS for sheer gooblygook.
There are several areas to the Public sector and given the recent job evaluations across councils pay is generally lower for more people now,and given that some of these staff work with the most vunerable and deprived pay and terms and conditions are pretty low especially when things go wrong, social workers and child deaths, police and not catching criminials and so on.
Overall there are savings that could be made in services that are already stretched both budget wise and staff wise, see id cards and other govt fluff but there is a sybotic relationship between public and private as was mentioned before so look a bit wider than oh all public sector is crap, my experience of private sector in the last 20 yrs has been shocking especially in relation to bankers, city finances ( oh you know Jonny have a job!) Construction and so on. Public sector workers are in the general hard working individuals
