Spending cuts not being implemented
(CNS): Less than a quarter of the recommendations for spending cuts made during government’s review of the public sector that were accepted by Cabinet have been implemented, according to minutes released by the Deputy Governor’s Office. The minutes covering a meeting of civil service heads last month show only 21 of 97 (just over 21%) of potential cash saving measures have been adopted so far. The reasons for the delay in execution vary, the minutes record, but CS bosses heard that implementation targets will now be set as part of this year’s performance agreements for COs and other public sector heads.
Deputy Governor Franz Manderson said that a project oversight committee would also be created to monitor and report the progress of implementation to him.
The minutes show that a report on a number of other reports is also due in connection with the review of the Public Management and Finance Law, the Miller Shaw Report and Keith Luck Report.
In what appeared to be a case of bureaucratic overload, the minutes recorded that the recommendations made in those reports are to be categorized and then placed into yet another report for the deputy governor before the end of November. Then, in relation to queries about the status of the comprehensive review of the PSML, which made recommendations for improvement within the civil service, Manderson suggested that a small committee of chief officers and himself also review that report and determine which recommendations were outstanding and “ensure their timely implementation”.
Manderson revealed that he had been invited to attend the Heads of Civil Service conference in London this month. Chief officers engaged in the Phase 4 Review of the civil service will travel to London to meet with the Cabinet Office team involved in a similar exercise in the UK. The civil service heads will also meet with their counterparts in other UK agencies, the minutes stated. The FCO is covering the cost of Manderson’s travel and contributing to the cost of travel for the CO in keeping with the commitment made in the White Paper.
Meanwhile, the minutes also show that, despite the clampdown on spending and the need to cut jobs across the civil service, the moratorium on recruitment was not necessarily a blanket policy. Civil service portfolio head Gloria McField-Nixon said that recruitment requests that were put on hold during the budget proceedings were now being dealt with.
“Every request is being looked at in light of the budget for that particular ministry or department,” the minutes state. The deputy governor heard that he would be provided with reports on headcount and human resource related costs and “moratorium requests” would be become a monthly exercise.
Among the other issues raised at the 17 September meeting, Courts Administrator Kevin McCormac noted that the recent passing of legislation such as the Children’s Law and the Traffic Law were likely to have an impact on the court and suggested that a planned timetable about new laws should be issued to the relevant agencies from the drafting stage onwards to allow proper preparation.
See minutes in full below.
Category: Politics
Franz do something meaningful please. Hold the Chief Officers accountable for their actions and performance. We will never turn this ship around until we deal with these issues. The spending and complacency need to stop.!!!!!!!!
When you rely on fools to do your work you are paying for nothing.
A housewife could do a better job of running this country than the politicians and civil servants to whom we have entrusted this job. A housewife knows how to live within one's means, how to manage a household, tighten belt and curb spending when money is tight and yet still manage to pay bills and feed her family from sometimes less than 1 bag of groceries, and she does this without running her family into excessive debt or bankruptcy. I would rather vote for a housewife than for any of these so-called educated idiots we have running this country. This is why nothing ever gets done in Cayman….too many committees reviewing too many reports and shuffling paper around and then hitting the "repeat" button each time before they actually "implement" anything. Don't worry folks, come next year and the year after that, we will still be forming more and more committees to examine the recommendations of even more reports that will need to be done, in order to figure out which measures will actually be "implemented". The only thing that will stop this exercise in futility is when the UK say "enough is enough" and this place is taken over by them and the constitution is suspended, like they took charge in Turks and Caicos and did the necessary cleaning up and layoffs themselves. Because the politicians we have here, past and present, don't have the will nor fortitude to do it themselves and upset their voter base. So don't hold your breath waiting for anything positive to happen in the meantime. It will only happen when the inevitable occurs, and it might be sooner rather than later, at the rate this country is going down the toilet.
It was always the case that we were heading for a budget crisis because we new that Macregime could not do what was required under the agreements to allow the budget through. However the CIG behaviour in refusing to implement the necessary legislation and failing to take the spending restrictions seriously just means the crunch is coming much sooner than we might have anticipated.
It's high time a committee was formed to report on why these recommendations were not implimented!! That report should immediately be forwarded to a larger committee. Which would underscore and prioritize the findings. Then those findings should revert back to the original committee for their recommendation. They should do this monthly!!! Or until the end of the world. Which ever comes first.
Don’t worry, they are meeting this week about it, in Curaçao.
If unna could see all the money being thrown around in my small department! Lil despicable abusive and arrogant joke of A set of bosses if i evah did see!!!
An audit is desperately needed!!
It is obvious you have a DUTY to report such abuses. It is up to people like you to police these matters that will otherwise go unchecked….Thanks in advance.
"Performance targets"!! – since when did performance matter in the Civil Service?. As for the minutes were they prepared by the education dept – the word "eminent" is used when it should obviously be "imminent". If this is the "performance " of our senior civil servants, God help us!.
Anyone else notice this little gem in the minutes:
"Chief Officers engaged in the Phase 4 Review of the Civil Service – (Rationalization of the Civil Service) will also travel to London, to meet with the Cabinet Office team involved in a similar exercise in the UK. Additionally the Chief Officers will meet with their counterparts in other UK agencies. The FCO is contributing to the cost of travel, in keeping with the commitment made in the White Paper."
In other words, the people who have been appointed to cut government spending are going to start with a government funded junket to London to talk to someone else who once had to cut spending.
Keep up the good work!
Did anybody expect any different, is there anyway I can see the budget and the underpinning assumptions surrounding it, or was it just created by plucking some figures out of the air?
What will happen to those people who were responsible for the first implementation, but did not do their job? Will they get promoted?
A fat kid in a cake shop has more financial restraint than these fools.
The only cuts our Honorable Premier is interested in are the cutting of bigger slices of the financial pie for himself, while we get smaller pieces due to the higher fees and prices being legislated.
And they've all just been on another jolly around the world again after being told to CUT SPENDING!! What a laugh McKeeva just doesn't care & can't see the long term implications this will have. Soon com!!
They have no intention of cutting spending and every initiative or investigation is being diverted into a bureaucratic black hole from which it can never emerge.
The gravy train has too much momentum to be stopped easily.
The inevitable outcome is going to be that government spending will once again exceed budget even though the budget was ridiculously huge already and allowed for all manner of slush funds, vote buying and waste and the use of the CS as a defacto social welfare scheme.
As we all know revenue is going to fall short of the budget as well because all the government did was increase fees without taking lost business into account.
And we're already in trouble because Mac hasn't passed the FFR into law as required.
So next year's budget is going to be more of a fiasco than this year's one. Tax will be back on the table, the UK will be even less accommodating, fees will go up, more business will be lost, more people will leave and things will get worse.
This is not going to change until spending is brought under control and accountability is introduced.
In other worlds anything that would take actual work must be farmed out to the private sector to get it done and of course will be tendered by the manager who's company will eventually get the contract. In Grand Cayman this is called "honorable" progress.
pssssh! this is all these jokers can do – create committees, pass the buck and push paper!
and travel on our $
don't worry the private sector can always bail us out again………zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Whenever I see the word 'committee' used in connection with CIG it always reminds of an 11-letter word beginning with 'Clu' and ending with 'uck' – I'm sure you can all fill in the rest.
What you need here isn't another gang of overpaid public officials protecting their own interests, it's someone closely related to the grim reaper slashing and burning their way through the overblown ranks of the civil service.
hey mr manderson…obviously time for more awards for our 'hardworking' civil servants….zzzzzzzzzz
civil service= a rats nest of incompetence…..
It is easier to get rid of a rats nest. We have a disastrous and overpaid civil service and a government too scared to stand up to them. Mac has no spine when it has come to this issue. He has tinkered but shown absolutely no leadership.
What is clearly needed in government is more meetings to discuss the procedures for having committees consider the need for more meetings.
In the private sector heads would have rolled and finances put back on track long ago.
It is much easier in the Civil Service ro keep on creating committees and drawing up reports than to actually implement anything. This is why so little of substance actually gets done. This is especially true when certain Chief Officers are in charge of "projects" as is the case of the Luck Report and PFML matters. They have not the ability to do anything other than review rhe reports and create committees to report on the reviews of the report and suggest "the way forward" which is often to assign "implementation" of the committee's review of the report to another committee which…………………………
The civil service has become a I force answerable only to themselves and between them and the 9000 freeloaders they will impoverish then destroy our way of life. Thank you idiot politicians for losing control of this situation.
Government spending is like heroin addiction; withdrawal will be a long and painful process. The danger of "falling off the wagon" will always be one dollar away.
Well what a huge surprise. Typical of Civil Services the World over – let the oversight process slip for just a moment and you end up with the tail wagging the dog.
Business as usual in the CS. I will make a prediction revenue will fall short of projections also.