Recent debates in the New Zealand media have started to open up rifts over the public service and its handling of the Delta outbreak. The Public Service Commissioner himself, Peter Hughes, has stepped up to publicly defend public servants—Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield in particular.

Many of the arguments go beyond COVID-19, however, into the very nature of the public service. But what is the evidence base for this? Our research shows how the public service has changed character in recent years. Based on studies of public sector work force data we can identify a few trends in the civil service.

First, the growth of managers and those working with internal ‘corporate services’ have exceeded the growth of front-line and operative workers in terms of percentage in the years 2007–2018. Whilst the number of information and communications technology (ICT) workers—normally considered to be a professional group with a high growth rate—in the core civil service grew with 10.3 percent, the equivalent growth in ‘managers’ was 14.3 percent, and there was even a drop in number of policy analysts (-9.5 percent).

Second, the number of traditional administrative public sector workers, such as clerical and secretarial, has decreased significantly (45.3 percent in the 2007–2018 period), or experienced a slower growth, like sworn police officers in the police. Although we can identify a similar trend in the private sector, the growth in the public sector is significantly higher. For example, while the growth of business, HR and marketing professionals in the private sector was 9.7 percent in the period 2006-2013, the similar figure for the public sector was 20.1 percent. And this during a period where there was a government cap on public sector recruitment.

These changes can partly be explained by the growth of new professions in the public service, such as the introduction of new information and communication technologies. However, it is still evident that there has been an increasing focus on the internal organisational and managerial matters rather than the previous external and operational attention. Furthermore, whereas some of the changes should be seen in the light of erstwhile waves of managerialism and neo-liberalism, the attention to new accountability regimes also involves issues around diversity, inclusion and emphasising other values (‘mainstreaming’) in the public service.

We can at present only speculate about the consequences around this, but much anecdotal evidence points at an increasing number of public servants involved in either securing compliance with performance indicators internally, or with deflecting the organisation from outsider actors seeking to hold the organisation accountable, protecting its reputation. The attention is on making sure the right boxes are ticked, and to protect yourself from external critique.

However, some overseas studies—particularly in the Nordic countries—have raised some issues with this development. First, there is the risk of an increase of ‘cold’ rather than ‘warm’ hands—e.g., more people talking about patients than to patients. Second, that too much attention to accountability risks turning public sector staff from ‘honest triers’ to ‘reactive gamers’. Third, many academic authorships have raised the issue whether these accountability mechanisms really are efficient.

We feel that further rifts about the New Zealand public service and its response to COVID-19 are inevitable the longer we remain in lockdown. We see this as partly a natural reaction to social frustration, but more as a symptom of a conversation that the country has missed out on. It’s time to start that conversation, and time to use a firm evidence base to show who we are really talking about.

Dr Karl Löfgren is deputy head of school and associate professor in the School of Government, Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington.

Michael Macaulay is Professor of Public Administration in the School of Government at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.

Read the original article on Newsroom.