Who pays for incompetence?

Round 1:
A friend from Germany was recently applying for British Citizenship and - being a diligent individual - had followed the instructions to the letter. All the appropriate forms were completed and the whole lot sent off with instructions to pay the amount listed on the Borders Agency Website.

What my friend did NOT know was that the amount payable had been changed a month earlier. Nobody at the UKBA seems to think that they should have updated their website at the same time. Consequently the whole bundle of papers was sent back with an instruction to pay the correct amount.

Now if this was a retail business the Trades Descriptions Act would apply and the supplier (in this case UKBA) would be bound to provide the service at the advertised price. Try telling that to someone who simply follows their internal rules and has no sense to see the issue.

Round 2:
Having decided that there was nothing for it but to pay the revised fee - all the papers were repackaged and sent off with a NEW payment instruction for the higher amount.

Of course that should have been the end of it and a new British Citizen would shortly be celebrating the fact.

Needless to say further incompetence has intervened. UKBA seem not to have received the payment instruction because the whole pile of papers came back again, with a letter telling him to pay the correct amount and minus the payment slip that had been included two weeks previously.

You would think that in this day and age that a Government Agency was capable of opening its post without losing stuff - especially when it is sent Special Delivery.

Overall my friend is no further advanced with his application and has so far spent £5.50 on each occasion with Royal Mail and UKBA are incurring courier fees with DX for sending the papers back again. And all because someone in their administration cannot (a) update the marketing material in a timely fashion; and (b) cannot open the mail without losing slips of paper.

Given the focus on cost saving in Government - it is about time that this kind of incompetence was eradicated. Ultimately the British Taxpayer is footing the bill at both ends. I suspect that the issue here is far from uncommon and in most instances the recipients of this treatment are hardly in a position to make a complaint. They simply have to shrug their shoulders and go round the loop again and again ...

The problem ultimately stems from building rigid systems that have not been thoroughly thought through and tested. There can be no legitimate complaint from the Civil Servants that they are overworked. This is a foolhardy approach to procedure that is costing everybody time and money.

If YOU were hiring people to operate a business for you - would you let this type of attitude prevail?

Reducing waste...

I was having a discussion the other day with a senior Civil Servant about the impacts of Primary and Secondary Legislation on workload in government.

Historically Government has always distrusted minor errors creeping into administrative areas even when it can be shown that their incidence is very small paling to insignificant. The response has mostly been to add additional legislation requiring more layers of bureaucracy, checking and Rules - often to little overall effect. This reminded me of the work of the House of Lords Select Committee on the Merits of Statutory Instruments last year. Lord Filkin, the past chair, pointed out that there is an "optimistic belief ... that something would happen in the way you thought it would" when legislation was drafted. The Committee also went on to comment that "they [Government Departments] are weak on really thinking through if this is the best way to get what they want."

All this ties together when you realise that vast areas of government administration are bound by such oft-misguided law. What if we could release some of the workload? Better government or at least as good as now but with less effort - leading to efficiencies.

Therefore - as we approach an Election wherein the topic of savings to the economy are at the forefront of everyone's mind - maybe now is a good time to question whether there might not be a better way of legislating for administrative matters. At least there ought to be rather more trust of the workforce to do the right thing, coupled with accountabilities when things occasionally go awry.

The current mechanism that relies on leaving things to internal Policy Units is fatally flawed - they simply cannot write a rule for every occasion and the lack of allowed discretion in the Public Sector these days is strangling effectiveness at birth. Policy statements should set out an ethos to be followed. That kind of guidance is much more flexible when dealing with the occasional curved ball.