Minister welcomes Telstra productivity report

Stephen Withers
Friday, 23 October 2009 08:31

IT Industry - Market

Lindsay Tanner, Federal Minister for Finance and Deregulation, has welcomed a report on government productivity commissioned by Telstra. It contains "some very useful insights," he said.

The Government Productivity Report was compiled by Sweeney Research on behalf of Telstra. Sweeney surveyed 200 senior executives in a range of government organisations.

Federal, state and local government organisations were included, along with statutory organisations, and 84% identified improvement to productivity, efficiency and performance as a priority.

Federal and local government executives were slightly more likely (88% and 80% respectively) to nominate this area, while state government and statutory organisations were more likely to be focused on better service delivery (87% and 77%).

The good news - from a taxpayer's perspective is that 77% of government organisations expect to see productivity improvements over the next 12 months. ICT has an important part to play, but budget constraints will mean the emphasis will be doing more with existing kit rather than new investments.

At the launch of the report, Tanner observed that one metric was the proportion of government spending used on "running ourselves" as opposed to deliverables such as pension payments and deployed soldiers.

He said the report showed that government organisations do regard productivity as important, and quipped "I'd be interested to know who those 16% were" that didn't say improving productivity, efficiency or performance was a priority.

Increasing productivity can result in having surplus employees, but Tanner said the focus wasn't on headcount and that the previous budget allocated funds to the Public Service Commission to allow for redeployment. He said it was important that people should be able to move around the public service.

Please read on for more about Federal Government productivity measures.