Premier locks up chiefs for powwow on plan

The Government has hired the international management consultants Cap Gemini, experts in outsourcing and technology, to help with the "public service response" to Mr Iemma's plan for a state plan, announced last month.

On June 26, Mr Iemma said the Government would prepare a state plan for the next 10 years, prompting ridicule from the Opposition and media. The Premier had said: "For me there is only one option - NSW needs a plan."

Now, more than 50 of the state's mandarins - from the director-general of the Department of Health to the Police Commissioner, Ken Moroney - have been taken out of their jobs to prepare their views on how this can be achieved.

The Premier told the heads of department in an address on Monday: "This is the chance for CEOs to make an historic shift in the way we deliver services.

"I want the state plan to be stitched into the very fabric of government. I intend it to be the fundamental instrument of public policy in this state."

Mr Iemma said he wanted to see "innovation and creativity in policymaking" and he had "told CEOs and agency heads that new ideas on how to better deliver services will be rewarded and backed".

A spokesman for the Premier, Todd Hayward, said the workshop had been organised by the director-general of the Premier's Department, Col Gellatly.

"They [Cap Gemini] have run similar workshops with the Department of Services in Canada, the UK Ministry of Defence and NATO," Mr Hayward said.

He would not say how much the consultants were costing, but said they were funded by "existing budgets of agencies".

But the Leader of the Opposition, Peter Debnam, said the Government "just want to be seen to have a plan".

"I think it's now a few months before an election, it's … completely inappropriate for public servants to be tied up in Labor Party campaign preparations."

Mr Iemma said the state plan would be drafted before the end of August.

[Andrew Clennell SMH July 21, 2006]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/premier-locks-up-chiefs-for-powwow-on-plan/2006/07/20/1153166519056.html