The NSW Government has today announced the introduction of structural changes to reduce over-reliance on consultants and bring costs under control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A new unit to be set up within the Premier\u2019s Department to help reduce the use of consultants by redirecting agencies to in-house specialist resources where they are available and building in-house capabilities for services with the highest demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A new group will be responsible for identifying skills shortages and workforce gaps and undertaking long-term planning to deliver essential services across the state. This will be an expansion of the Premier\u2019s Department\u2019s existing role in leading industrial relations policy for the public sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Premier\u2019s Department will also be responsible for collecting and reporting data on the public sector workforce, including the People Matters survey.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n This function is being transferred from the Public Service Commission to ensure it is better integrated into whole-of-government policy making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The government will this week introduce legislation to amend the Government Sector Employment Act 2013<\/a> to sharpen the focus of the Public Service Commissioner on ethics and integrity, while transferring workforce planning and data collection functions into the Premier\u2019s Department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Public Service Commissioner will continue to fulfil her important independent statutory functions to safeguard integrity in public sector recruitment and employment matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Premier\u2019s Department, jointly with The Cabinet Office, will also be tasked with leading the development of a new Core NSW Public Service Work Policy to set clear expectations of the types of work that agencies must be able to perform in-house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The changes will continue the NSW Government\u2019s ongoing efforts to rebuild essential services and unwind an increasing reliance on external consultants including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The machinery-of-government changes will place a greater focus at the heart of government on ensuring the public sector has the necessary capability and expertise in-house to deliver against the government\u2019s key priorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Premier Chris Minns said:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cToday we announce commonsense changes that will ensure the public sector is delivering for NSW.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI want to thank Commissioner Kathrina Lo and everyone at the Public Service Commission for your work to date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis announcement is all about leveraging your expertise to better help us solve some of the most pressing challenges that we face as a state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe are focused on ensuring that we rebuild in-house capability and only use external consultants when it\u2019s actually needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis overreliance on consultants has directly contributed to the budget mess we inherited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe were elected with a clear mandate to rebuild our essential services and repair the budget.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Special Minister of State John Graham said:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Liberals\u2019 obsession with private consultants damaged our state’s capacity to deliver essential services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Liberals engaged one consultant every hour \u2013 including when it could have been done in-house for half the price.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe are changing this approach to bring costs under control and re-build capacity in the public sector.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Minister for Domestic Manufacturing and Government Procurement Courtney Houssos said:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Liberals wasted taxpayers\u2019 money, including engaging consultants more than 10,000 times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis waste and mismanagement characterised the Liberals\u2019 and Nationals\u2019 approach to finances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe have begun the important work of repairing the budget, including cleaning up the waste we inherited with extravagant spending on consultants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis will be a budget that continues to responsibly reduce the debt left to us by the former Liberal-National government, while continuing to rebuild our essential public services.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The NSW Government has today announced the introduction of structural changes to reduce over-reliance on consultants and bring costs under control. A new unit to be set up within the Premier\u2019s Department to help reduce the use of consultants by redirecting agencies to in-house specialist resources where they are available and building in-house capabilities for … Continue reading “Changes to further support public sector capacity, reduce over-reliance on consultants, and bring costs under control”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nswnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27057,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27056\/revisions\/27057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}