Projects and Project Managers

One of the reasons that Kevin and his crew have slumped in the polls is because of a perception amongst the *bogan* class - that they couldn't manage a "piss up in a brewery".

Now this is partially true but it's not as bad as the BS being put about by the Murdoch press and then picked up by every lazy media organisation in the nation - including the ABC.

Let me recap for just a moment. The government's response to the GFC was essentially to spend lots of money to ensure that the *bogan* class kept their jobs. And this spending meant that several large projects had to be initiated and managed - quickly and concurrently. The insulation and school building programmes were both quite massive in scale and scope.

And the good news is that they worked - I think we have all heard about the failures because these have been amplified by a grubby and self interested right wing media - but the successes were much bigger. And the nation has emerged from the GFC with little damage - except for Labor's political fortunes.

But for me a bigger issue is that while these programs were mostly successful they could have been hugely successful AND led to increased government popularity - if they had public sector implementation teams who knew how to run them.

Clearly the federal public sector don't have the skills, knowledge or capability to run programmes and projects of this nature - and the scary thing is that prior to this they didn't even know it.

As one of my colleagues is fond of saying "Compound ignorance is when you don't know that you don't know".

Meanwhile there are dozens of highly qualified and skilled project managers who have been sitting on the sidelines, twiddling their thumbs and watching with amusement as this little misadventure unfolds.

PS - But that's the thing about this nation when it comes to employment - the folks who can do the job aren't ever engaged - because the main engagement criteria are "to keep the costs down" when they should be "lets do the job properly". That's why we have the 457 Visa scam and why we will end up with WorkChoices Mark II when the monk gets the gig.