Josie Pagani: Gibberish words in the public sector cover up lack of accountability
Thursday, 20 October 2022
Josie Pagani is a commentator on current affairs and a regular contributor to Stuff. She works in geopolitics, aid and development, and governance.
OPINION: 'This transition is an opportunity to work together to improve wellbeing, become more productive, increase resilience and reduce inequality.'
If that word-salad sentence makes you wonder what the Ministry for the Environment intends to do, then you are not alone.
The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Simon Upton, has released a report, Environmental reporting, research and investment – Do we know if we’re making a difference?
The presence of a question mark in a headline usually indicates the answer is ‘’No’’.
**READ MORE:
* The fuss over Shakespeare is a distraction from the real scandal of arts funding
**
We do not have a system of accountability capable of telling us what is happening at the level of the government as a whole. Neither do we have clarity and transparency about what we’re trying to achieve, and without that, there can be no accountability.
Instead, there is a maze of strategies and agency-level initiatives, and virtually no systematic way to evaluate whether we’re making a difference, he says in the report.
Parliamentarians and citizens are not provided with information in a form that can be easily used to hold governments to account.
Auditor-General John Ryan agrees.
‘’I am concerned that it is often not clear to the public or Parliament what outcomes are being sought by governments, how that translates into spending, and ultimately what is being achieved with the public money the Government spends – about $150 billion last year,’’ he said.
‘’Reporting is often fragmented and spread between different organisations. It is left to Parliament and the public to piece together both what has been spent and what has been achieved. In many cases, this is not possible from information reported publicly.’’
We are pouring billions of dollars into an energy transition, health reforms, Three Waters. And our watchdogs are telling us we have no adequate way of knowing whether our efforts are making a difference, or assessing whether one set of initiatives is better than another.
We need better information about what is being attempted and what is being achieved, but, more importantly, better ways to make use of information about policy effectiveness.
Simon Upton wants to see outcomes clearly defined. ‘’Bar-code’’ environmental spending across agencies, he says, so we have a whole of government picture of what we’re spending. Then test if we’re making a difference.
The bureaucratic miasma in the opening paragraph of this column is not rare. Gibberish is routine in our public sector.
The chronic inability to be precise about the objective of government initiatives has real-world effects beyond its linguistic crimes.
We saw a fresh example this past week when Creative New Zealand was called out over its decision to decline a funding application from the Shakespeare Globe Centre NZ. Its own reviewer stated, to global ridicule, that the Bard's work is located in a ‘’canon of imperialism'’.
Even if it were, Creative NZ is not there to fix the historic sins of imperialism.
This is not Creative NZ’s fault. It has a tough job with little money. The poor decision was made possible because funders are given a well-intentioned objective like ‘’wellbeing and inclusion’’ instead of clear and therefore accountable goals. Those who attacked it for being ‘’woke’’ or politically correct miss the point. How do we detect the correct amount of woke?
Ironically, the point of Shakespeare is the improbable precision in his descriptions of universal experiences: ‘’wild goose chase’’ (Romeo and Juliet), ‘’eaten me out of house and home’’ (Henry IV), or ‘’cruel to be kind’’ (Hamlet).
Timeless expressions achieve their beauty through their matchless clarity. From clarity comes transparency, and from transparency emerges accountability and improvement.
A lack of clarity is not just drivel dressed in pretty words. It has a political purpose. Real power resides in the thickets. (Ahem: King Lear.)
We have a ‘’plethora’’ of roadmaps and strategies, data and research, Simon Upton observes, and no evidence that decision-making is consistently informed by evidence, let alone that outcomes are properly scrutinised.
‘’It has become clear to me that while there are links between the environmental information we collect, the research we undertake and the money we throw at environmental problems, they are often tenuous, lacking in transparency and governed by short-termism.’’
Governments highlight spending as evidence they are dealing with problems. Without good information there is no way to judge whether too little or too much money was thrown at a problem, and whether it made any difference, he says.
I have previously advocated for initiatives like much stronger select committees, equipped with sufficient policy grunt to evaluate policy choices, and led by MPs whose career choice to be a legislator balances the choice of others to be executives.
There are legitimate debates to be had about how much money is spent by government in pursuit of goals, and what those goals should be. But no matter where you stand on that, we need far stronger institutions to track value for money, because then we can achieve so much more.