From left, Davis and JonesThe Government has admitted that there is a genuine need, sometimes, to employ consultants/advisers in the public sector, there are instances when these persons are hired when it is not necessary.
"I am sure there are cases, from time to time, which do not meet strict standards of justification," Cabinet Secretary Dr. Carlton Davis tells The Sunday Gleaner.
It is a situation that has not gone unnoticed by civil servants.
Wayne Jones, president of the Jamaica Civil Service Association, says while he cannot provide examples, he has no doubt that "the system has been used to provide jobs for persons where the need does not exist". Davis says that in cases where these persons' engagement did not meet strict standards of justification, "ministries are asked to deal with them".
Back in 2003, he noted in the report he did on consultants and advisers, that they were a feature of public administration in Jamaica through successive administrations. At the same time, Davis observed that in some instances, the reason for hiring them in Jamaica was due to the "inadequacy of the bureaucracy in certain areas".
Justifying Government's partiality
But, he is now justifying what may seem to be Government's partiality to consultants and advisers, indicating that one of the reasons for bringing these persons into the public-sector workforce is that the Government has not been able to attract the more brilliant persons for long-term employment.
"Some of the 'best and brightest', most notably in the area of information technology, are simply not interested in establishing long-term appointment," Davis argues. "They prefer to do a job of work and move on."
Also, it is less expensive to use them rather than outsourcing to firms which have expenses, such as overhead charges, and it is easier to fire them. "It should be noted that the services of consultants/advisers in general are much more easily dispensed with if they fail to perform or break clauses in their contracts or non-renewal at the end of their terms," he says.
Some consultants/advisers are needed, he says, to strengthen the governance capacity of particular areas of the State, including the formulation, monitoring, evaluation and implementation of policy. They could be employed to perform one or more of these functions. But, they are also needed to perform in such areas as information technology, tax administration, management, communications, industrial relations, energy and the environment.
One of the examples he provided as proof of the need for their skills is the National Industrial Policy, which he says is largely the work of a consultant from abroad. The National Industrial Policy is "intended to provide the necessary basis for a clear, coherent and consistent set of policies to guide the Jamaican economy on a path of renewed growth and development," former Prime Minister P. J. Patterson wrote in 1996.
Davis also points to the Vision 2030 Project, an ambitious 25-year national development plan, which is expected to put the country in a position to achieve developed-country status by the year 2030. A draft of this plan is expected to be tabled in the House in April 2008. These projects are currently utilising the skills of consultants.
Jones recognises the need for special and scarce skills to work on projects rather than for long-term engagements. Asked if civil servants in the ministries were not qualified or competent enough to carry out the functions for which consultants/advisers were hired, he says: "Civil servants with the requisite skills more often than not are present, but sometimes, given the conditions to the funding of the projects, an external person might be required."
Communication adviser
Among the skills that the Government hired in one ministry, however, is that of a communication adviser, among others, to "monitor the news media on a daily basis and provide advice to the honourable minister and the permanent secretary on strategic communication matters and to provide proactive advice on media strategies aimed at maintaining a positive image for the minister and ministry".
But that ministry already has a staffed public-relations department, which should normally deal with such matters.
Still, in response to our questions of whether the use of multiple consultants/advisers makes a case for the overhaul of the public sector, Jones says where it is reckoned that there is an ongoing need to import skills, it should signal that the skills bank of the entity requires review. But Davis says the consultants/advisers represented a mere 0.1 per cent of the number of persons employed in the public sector. That, he says, is an understated fact, which must be taken into account.
phyllis.thomas@gleanerjm.com
Still muzzled - Some consultants must sign the Official Secrets Act
The job of consultancy with the Government comes with a rigid condition welded into some of the contracts that consultants must sign, or there is no job. The condition of service is that consultants must sign the declaration under the Official Secrets Act.
It is seen in contracts with the Ministry of National Security and the Ministry of Finance. In fact, six of the eight contracts which The Sunday Gleaner received from the Security Ministry under the Access to Information Act (ATI) show that the consultants had signed them. The others did not have that condition.
Under the Official Secrets Act, often regarded as intimidatory, civil servants - who divulge information which comes to them while employed by the State, and which is deemed classified, during or after their tenure of service - could be found criminally liable by the courts and sentenced.
Conflicting acts
This 96-year-old law operates parallel to, and in stark conflict with, the Access to Information Act (ATI Act), which gives citizens and other persons a general legal right of access to official government documents, which would otherwise be inaccessible.
But even as the ATI Act was being launched in 2002, the Ministry of National Security was enforcing the national muzzle by making the signing of the Official Secrets Act a condition of employment. As late as last year, it had the requirement in contract agreements with consultants; so too did the Ministry of Finance.
Recognising the confusion and the conflict that the existence of these two pieces of legislation pose, individuals and interest groups have been calling for a repeal of the Official Secrets Act.
Among those advocating a change is Government Senator Professor Trevor Munroe. "How can you have in one jurisdiction, a law which says you and I have a fundamental right to information, and another law which says there is an obligation to hold official secrets?" he asked, and declared, "It makes no sense."
Munroe said: "(The) Official Secrets Act must be repealed now, not one day after the next meeting of the Parliament." Munroe was speaking last June at an access-to-information seminar hosted by the United States-based Carter Centre, in collaboration with the Ministry of Information and Development and local stakeholders.
Up to press time, Professor Munroe was not available for comment.
Breach of promise
Dr. Carolyn Gomes, who heads the human rights lobby group Jamaicans For Justice, says the Government's grip on the Official Secrets Act was a complete breachof promise.
Gomes says the country was promised in 2002, when the Access to Information Act was passed, that the Official Secrets Act would have been repealed. It is not compatible with the ATI Act, she says, heaping scorn upon the fact that consultants with the government were being forced to sign the Official Secrets Act.
"It's a mockery of any commitment to openness and transparency," she argues. "As a society we have got to insist that the Government keeps its word."
Sensitive contracts
Asked to comment on the fact that the nature of some of the contracts could be considered sensitive, she said: "They are protected from disclosure of sensitive information under the ATI Act. The act exempts matters that might affect national security. You couldn't disclose that information under the act anyhow, so what are you keeping the Official Secrets Act to do?"
Former Information Minister Colin Campbell last year restated the Government's intention to repeal the act, but nothing has since been heard.
However, it seems to suit the Government to have these two pieces of legislative contradictions existing side by side. Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, last December, admonished public-sector workers to respect the ATI Act, after The Sunday Gleaner had carried an article about her travel expenses, but she told them to remember that they were still bound by the Official Secrets Act.
While addressing a staff meeting with civil servants from agencies and ministries under her portfolio, at the National Indoor Sports Centre, she said: "Access to information, yes, and we give the information, and we are not to hide. We are to be transparent and we are to be accountable.
"But people talking about who give them information and who (does) not. I (am) just warning you, staff, be careful, there is something known as the Secrecy Act and there (is) information, particularly information relating to people"s personal affairs, their bio data, their medical records. Nobody has the right to be leaking information on people."
phyllis.thomas@gleanerjm.com
