There is an issue that is barely raised in the election campaign for the Parliament of Catalonia because it is very uncomfortable for the candidates with options to govern. It is about the functioning of the public administration. It’s a dry topic, but very relevant and one that affects us all. The low performance of the Administration is evidence among the citizens and is a cry within the public machinery itself. Anyone you talk to responsibly in the sector confirms that the bankruptcy is general and affects from the town councils to the Generalitat and the State.
“If this was a private company, it would have closed a long time ago because it was little or no competitive, productive or effective”, say experts familiar with the sector. “For some time now, it has been noticed that the work is not going as before”, they say. It is as if the engine of the machinery is seized. And if the engine doesn’t work well, the rest of the system suffers. This is what the experts and the bodies that ensure the proper functioning of public affairs say, from the Grievance Ombudsman, who recently stated that “the Administration is not ready for the Catalonia of eight million”, to the Index of Government Quality, which is endorsed by the EU and which leaves the Generalitat behind Spain and most European regions, as Jaume V. Aroca gathered on Friday in the X-ray on the Generalitat.
What is the cause of this persistent failure? There are several factors, although the problem was accelerated by the restrictions on access to the Administration that the pandemic brought and which have not been reversed. The terrible decision to force you to arrange an appointment or to relate to machines has impersonalized the relationship between the Administration and the citizens and has caused a major discomfort that has also been warned countless times by different entities that defend the rights of taxpayers. Technology should help improve procedures, reduce paperwork and absurd comings and goings, but in practice, the feeling is the opposite among citizens.
Another cause of this precarious situation is a melon that no one dares to start: the working conditions of civil servants. This labor sector has benefited from numerous social advantages. We are talking about the possibility of teleworking two days a week, of accumulating the schedule from Monday to Friday in four days a week or the reduction of weekly hours worked, among many others. It is to be congratulated for these measures which the private company has not adopted and which, therefore, represent a grievance with the rest of the workers. But whoever applies them must take into account their consequences.
The result of this labor improvement policy is that, even if the same percentage of civil servants is maintained in relation to the total population, in reality there are fewer hours worked and, therefore, productivity is disappointingly low. So the only solution is for more hands to be put in place to cover the gaps that the labor advantages have left in the service. Carles Ramió, professor of Political Science and Administration at the UPF, points this out well in his book The collapse of the Administration in Spain: the Administration is going through its worst moment since the establishment of democracy and is headed for the ‘inevitable collapse. The recipe for solving this is very controversial and involves redesigning the attention to the public, suspending certain privileges of civil servants or redefining professional profiles, taking into account artificial intelligence.
I don’t know if the latter would be solutions, but it’s clear that it’s not just about hiring more people, it’s about getting work done, being efficient and making it clear that the civil service must help citizens, and not complicate them life.
