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Author Topic: On Government and Civil Service
DrConway
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 490

posted 23 October 2002 10:26 PM      Profile for DrConway     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
To recap, we'll just recite the list of posts here.

quote:
sheep:

I hate to bring this up to, because I'm not trying to rain on Russell's parade, but I think one of the major flaws in his scheme is his pilot client. The Government of Canada. Governments, when it comes to doing business, have a well deserved reputation for being non innovative thinkers, slow to respond to new ideas, resistant to change, and hopelessly mired in bureaucracy. I've worked for enough to know this for a fact. No matter how many good points you could make for using an opensource replacement for Word, you're gonna have some manager sitting in a corner office who's been there for 30 years, complaining "where's the little dog that shows you how to type a letter? I want that little dog!". And these people, within government, wield a lot of power.
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Me:

Maybe they're so conservative and unchanging because right-wingers have so successfully trashed the notion that government can be a force for positive change that nobody of any creativity and intelligence wants to work in a government job.

And why not? All they get is shat on by people like Stephen Harper every day who vote Canadian Alliance because it feels good to beat up on defenceless government employees.
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sheep:

How would that explain the BC government then?
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Me:

I'm talking about the civil service, Captain Obvious.
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sheep:

Still a Lieutenant actually...the promotion hasn't come through yet. And I'm talking about the civil service as well. But this is hardly the right thread to talk about that.


So here we are.

My response is this:

Since the 1980s, right-wing movements such as the Fraser Institute, the C.D. Howe, the BCNI and the National Citizens' Coalition have done everything to trash the notion that government is good for anything.

So along comes Jane University Graduate in 1995. She looks at a job doing environmental assessments for the BC Ministry of Environment, or she can become an analyst for a private company that does assays.

In the 1960s, she'd likely go for the government job because it had a reputation then for being where all the crackerjacks went.

In 1995, her life experience in exposure to this constant barrage of right-wing propaganda (especially in BC, or did you ignore the hatchet job the media did on the NDP, sheepo?) makes her unconsciously associate government jobs with boring people. And nobody likes to think of themselves as boring. So all the people who really have nowhere else to go silt up the government offices while the private sector cherry-picks the crackerjacks.

Or did the BC government somehow become a hotbed of innovation under Gordo? Hah. More like a hotbed of fear and loathing of Gary Collins, who, by the way, has way more grey hairs and seems to have gained about 10 pounds since he got in. I didn't know playing hatchet man for Gordo was such exhausting work. Must be hard counting up all the lives you just destroyed, Gary-boy.

[ October 23, 2002: Message edited by: DrConway ]


From: You shall not side with the great against the powerless. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Pogo
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2999

posted 26 October 2002 06:39 AM      Profile for Pogo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Herchel Hardin's leadership campaign was full of nonsense, however the one point he made repeatedly was that our civil serice is very innovative. It is just attacked mercilessly by the business community. However, if you look at the stories on inside the business section you will find lots of places where the government is innovative and forward thinking.

The post office has the most reliable courier service in Canada. Especially for the home based business. Easy to access and very reliable.


From: Richmond BC | Registered: Aug 2002  |  IP: Logged

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