Confidence in the Civil Service

D

Duplex

Registered User
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According to the attached survey the Irish have more confidence in their civil service than any other nation on Earth. Is anyone else surprised at these findings? Also if you press the correlations button attached to the chart you find some interesting coindences.

[broken link removed]
 
Do they explain anywhere their survey methodologies in arriving at these results? No point in commenting on the results before establishing that they are meaningful and statistically sound.
 
Some of the other stats seem to be incorrect which would surely undemine confidence in the original survey mentioned?
 
So who's got the best story of Civil Service incompetance? I know a branch that unplugged their main server (notice on machine said do not log off, restart, turn off) in order to plug in their Xmas tree fairy lights.
 
It always puzzles me as to how so many people assume that the civil service have a monopoly on

i) incompetence
ii) waste
iii) stupidity

In fairness anyone that would swallow the above "fairy lights" story at face value would themselves fall into category iii)
 
OSI, xmas before last, map server unplugged.

With some branches exaggeration or the need to rely on 2nd hand stories, unfortunately, isn't required.
 
Howitzer said:
With some branches exaggeration or the need to rely on 2nd hand stories, unfortunately, isn't required.
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Would you include private sector business or industry in that? If not, why not?
 
ubiquitous said:
Would you include private sector business or industry in that? If not, why not?
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Definately. But Shnaek has highlighted the general reason why not. I'm sure there are exceptions though.
 
shnaek said:
In the private sector you get fired/let go for incompetance.
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really? I would contend that this doesn't generally happen in any industry or sector where labour is scarce, construction being one good example.

If I fired one of my (private sector) staff for mistakenly unplugging a server or pc, they would clean me out on an unfair dismissals case.
 
Howitzer said:
OSI, xmas before last, map server unplugged.
Click to expand...
If it was their main server then why wasn't it physically cordoned off and why connected to the mains via a UPS or other power backup system? Is their IT infrastructure administration done in house or outsourced to an external, private sector, company? It would be ironic if it was the latter and this was a case of private sector incompetence.
 

Well just to highlight OSI's security policy.... There was a piece on Nationwide about 2 months ago (15th Feb) where they did a bit of walk through the OSI offices. These servers are indeed in a secure room with a keypad entry system. As the guy was showing them into the room the camera focused in on the keypad as he was keying in the code. You can see the numbers clear as day.

The xmas tree was placed in the server room by the OSI employees.
 
ubiquitous said:
such as failure to spell correctly? :lol
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Perhaps if you're a journalist

I don't meant to come down on the civil service - but the main problem here is that it is so heavily unionised that people who work hard at their job fare no better than people who do nothing. In my dealings with the civil service I have found that people aren't at all keen on taking responsibility for anything. Any query is constantly passed on. There's no transparency of procedure.
In fairness the same issues exist in any country. That doesn't mean we have to like it!
 
shnaek said:
In the private sector you get fired/let go for incompetance.
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I disagree. If you're junior and incompetent, you get fired. If you're senior and incompetent, you get promoted. So, similar to the Civil Service in at least the treatment of senior people.
 
Maybe nationmaster.com doctored the results because they were afraid that the civil service would take to their beds en-mass and put in a claim? After all, if it works for a semi-state employee… not that I'm biased or anythink.
 
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