Brian Anderson The Western Front www.sunlive.co.nz

National and local government has been searching for ‘back office savings' and ‘efficiency dividends'. Government claimed immediately a saving of 3500 state sector jobs, while promising to provide a better and more efficient service. We should also be looking at committees for further savings.

We all know the camel was a horse designed by a committee, but this weekend we have been informed by researchers that all committee members have a measurable drop in IQ of up to 30 per cent within the first hour of any committee meeting. The government obviously didn't hear the last bit and now ‘committees, working parties, advisory groups and various consultants are crawling all over the public sector charged with finding better ways of doing things'.

Any bets on them reducing the number of committees, forums or consultants etcetera? I have checked the number of committees in major towns and cities in New Zealand. In one large city, five committees are sufficient to administer a council, but another city has found work for 64 committees and forums. Think of the trees that have fallen to supply the number of matchsticks that must be needed to keep their eyes open.

Subcommittees add another problem. A manager can delegate authority, but he cannot delegate responsibility unless, of course, he has delegated decision making to a sub committee. These working groups make a decision and, at best, provide the main committee with four options; dumb, dumber, unpalatable and far too expensive. When the unpalatable choice is ratified by councillors who have had to read hundreds of pages of justification for the option, there is little time for debate, so the buck is left somewhere down the committee chain and more ‘back of house' bucks disappear down the drain.

There might be an excuse for young new manager trainees sitting in on these meetings for training and familiarization, but a Treasury stakeholder survey has noted that ‘too many whippersnappers are sent to meetings'. The older members sit back and the junior analysts have too much say on fiscal decisions. Of course they do. The others were probably bent over looking for their matches at decision making time.

Again the solution is simple. For every hour that a departmental official sits on a committee, his salary should be reduced by 30 per cent. Forget about councillors, governance and any fiscal responsibility. It is extremely difficult to even lose your knighthood for failure at that level. Down, in the back office, every committee member should be accountable for any advice and decisions made by their committee. If their camel meets specification, then each member should be able to record this success on his CV. If the committee decision proves a disaster, again, each member should be held accountable. Think of the efficiencies that would be derived from such a practice. Any misdemeanor, like being found to have drunk in a bar the night before, should incur an immediate suspension. They can't be all like Jesse Ryder in Wellington.

The greatest opportunity for freeloading must be in secret working groups. How many have never earned their tea and biscuits. Unfortunately, Western Bay has a culture where one observer has estimated that more than 60 per cent of the committees are holding their meetings in camera. Of course, there must have been some monitoring of their performance. You would think so, wouldn't you? Openness and accountability are key words for the new local government approach and it is well overdue now for Western Bay committees to come out of the closet. Perhaps the council could invest in the programme that was used to monitor the committee members' IQ during their meetings. It could be called a pilot scheme and would have to be supervised by a committee assembled for the purpose? Just joking.