Saving the trees and ‘double dipping’: The inefficiencies of public service and documentation!

I began this placement with government as I was curious if the ‘gossip’ and jokes that you hear about government workers is true. Are they all time wasters? Are they inefficient? How does the government process work? Would I really want to be a government worker?

I now have an opinion. Working for the government can sometimes be so convoluted. I was given a 56 page document that was to be my ‘toolkit’ on my first day of work. This has already expanded to around 70 pages.

To highlight some key areas here is a basic summary of my working day. I should mention that at this point I only work one day per week. The first hour is spent printing off the emails from the previous week and filing them in lever arch files. Then I file all the emails electronically into another set of files (this is what some people call ‘double dipping’: Doing the same thing twice). The next hour is spent reviewing the ‘toolkit’ I mentioned above, to assess my tasks for the day and identify any changes that have been made in the toolkit – as I mentioned this is a 70 page document so it takes a while to read through and try to find the things that have been changed. At the end of each day I have to update this toolkit with any new information and any email that I have sent out. This is another 45 minutes. This equals about three hours of document control per day.

I wonder what the government’s policy is about reducing the use of paper, efficient use of resources and using your time to create value for the public that we serve.

As a point of reflection, I feel this is an extremely inefficient method of recording information. As part of my report I will be putting forward recommendations to highlight these inefficiencies. I feel that I actually get about 4 hours of ‘real’ work done per day.

I understand that government policies require public servants to maintain a set of official government files. This is important for transparency and accountability. Honestly, can’t this be maintained electronically? This experience has allowed me to understand why different government departments become privatised. They are much more efficient!

The use of a toolkit is an excellent form of documentation. However, having all information in the one document is an overload of material.

I feel I could really be using my time more efficiently. Having worked on many events for corporate and private businesses, this is a completely different way of event coordination. I wanted to see what government process were like. Well... now I know!