HR transparency in local government 5

Rory Meakin Better Government

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) recently held a consultation on its proposed ‘Code of recommended practice for local authorities on data transparency.’ The proposed code requires councils to publish information according to three key principles: demand-led, timely and open. To meet these principles, it sets out a commendable list of standards and expectations for councils to disclose data in an automatic, useful manner. For instance, it requires publication of both ‘csv’ and ‘pdf’ file types as a minimum. Pdf is more useful for viewing immediately, whereas a csv file (short for ‘comma separated values’) is a list of pure text formatted only by commas; not very user-friendly for immediate viewing but highly useful if you plan to rearrange or do any other work with it. We very much welcomed the proposed code, but thought it could be strengthened further by removing loopholes some councils might otherwise exploit to drag their feet. You can see our full response below for our full range of recommendations.

But we also suggested something else that wasn’t in the proposed code at all – HR transparency. We said that public bodies subject to the code should publish a complete list of job titles and job descriptions of every single member of staff. We don’t think it’s necessary to publish remuneration details of staff on junior salaries. But it is important that taxpayers know what staff are employed to do and how many there are doing certain things. Publication of this information would surely lead to more informed debate about priorities in council spending which, in turn, would lead to more care in recruitment and staff allocation.

Taking care?

Hammersmith & Fulham council have made a great step forward in this area of their own accord, publishing detailed structure charts with every single job title. A win for transparency which other councils should emulate, but even they could go further, as our proposal for including job descriptions shows. DCLG and Hammersmith & Fulham should both be congratulated for their moves toward greater openness and transparency. But we should insist on HR transparency across the board and we hope that DCLG include our proposal in their final document.

Rory Meakin

Rory is a Research Associate at the TaxPayers’ Alliance. Rory’s work is focussed on tax policy and economics, with a particular focus on tax simplification.

Follow @rorymeakin

Blarg1987

Would you also include private companies that get public sector contracts on this bill as well as they are tax payer funded as your article is a little bit ambiguous on this point.
http://www.taxpayersalliance.com The TaxPayers’ Alliance

We did consider this as there is an obvious parallel but we found there are two reasons which led us to conclude it would not be a good move.
First, a practical difficulty. How to define ‘contract’? Do we need it to extend to contracts for stationery supplies and the like?
Second, as long as a) the value & nature of the contracts involved are published and b) open, free competition exists between suppliers for those contacts, we believe this exerts a more effective downward pressure on costs in favour of better value for taxpayers than getting private companies to disclose their salary details.

(Rory Meakin)

Blarg1987

You can easily define contracts as services that local authorities used to provide that have been outsourced.
With regards to the latter you can have both as tax payers we should have a right to know these salaries as they may have an effect on productivity and profits. If you just compare base line contracts you do not know the underlying quality control untill the contract has been signed.
I know you will say the client has the right to terminate the contractor if the quality is not up to standard but this very rarrly happens, as to do so is a time consuming process, has to been seen to be fair (which costs tax payers money) and for the elected emmebers could see them loose their positions.
http://profiles.google.com/baldeeheed Steve Collins

The myopic Taxpayers’ Alliance will soon be asking council employees to divulge what they ate for breakfast and the colour of the socks they’re wearing.

Councils are already the most transparent organisations in the country. Your relentless campaign against them, with your barely disguised sneering subtext, is now getting tiresome.

Just because Pickles tells you to target councils doesn’t mean that you have to do his bidding without question. Non partisan and grassroots my backside.

http://www.taxpayersalliance.com The TaxPayers’ Alliance

We did consider this as there is an obvious parallel but we found there are two reasons which led us to conclude it would not be a good move.
First, a practical difficulty. How to define ‘contract’? Do we need it to extend to contracts for stationery supplies and the like?
Second, as long as a) the value & nature of the contracts involved are published and b) open, free competition exists between suppliers for those contacts, we believe this exerts a more effective downward pressure on costs in favour of better value for taxpayers than getting private companies to disclose their salary details.

(Rory Meakin)