The government continues to deepen public sector reforms by cutting more spending and closing down public entities. But cutbacks are still being conflated with reforms. Not trusting its own staff, the government has hired external consultants to make its decisions.
That could be the pseudo-official explanation. The real story is that government employees are giving jobs to colleagues, friends and family. Between January and November of 2013, hiring of freelance consultants increased by 7.5% year-to-year. In euro, 32 million more. The biggest problem is not the amount of money or the fact that consultants are getting paid more while government employees suffer frozen or falling salaries, but that consultants are being hired at all while government employees are losing their jobs.
There is no logical explanation for this. The Ministries are not respecting the Management of Personnel, which limits the number of consultants a department can hire.
Further, setting a good example by saving will require long-term, permanent staffing cuts. So long as this culture colors the political class and civil servants with deep consulting training are ousted from the inner circle, we cannot say truthfully that the public sector has been reformed. True change is creating an efficient government staffed with completive people with an incentive to succeed in their careers.
