Ever wondered what a consultant does? You must have heard of them. They are the experts who grow and prosper with every government move.
Closing down schools? You need a consultant. Handing over government assets to big business friends? Better hire a consultant. Want to kick women out of hospitals as soon as they give birth? Commission a consultant to invent best practice birthing.
According to one reference (Dilbert), the word consultant originates from a combination of the words to con, as in to cheat someone, and insult.
Theoretically, it is possible to imagine a role for groups of workers with arcane and rarely required skills providing advice. In practice, consultants' functions have an almost mystical character, in keeping with the vast sums of money their companies are paid. Many consultants work for large companies consisting of thousands or tens of thousands of consultants, such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG and Anderson Consulting, three of the big five. These companies had their origins as accountancy firms.
It isn't just ordinary people who are mystified about the role of consultants. The Australian National Audit Office in September reported that it could not work out what a team of consultants, from the US law firm Shaw Pittman Potts and Trowbridge, had been doing to deserve almost $16 million from the Australian government.
This mystery relates to the Labor-initiated handing over of federal government's information technology assets to its big business friends. Not surprisingly, the Coalition government continued this activity through the Office of Asset Sales and Information Technology Outsourcing (OASITO).
The government announced that it would achieve savings of $1 billion by handing over information technology assets and a mountain of money to private business. More than half way through the process, claimed savings are just $30 million.
Although the audit report doesn't mention this, the hundreds of government information technology officers who sat locked in OASITO offices evaluating proposals, and the thousands of other information technology workers they talked to, know where the savings came from. OASITO cooked the books, for example, by delaying the announcement on the health sector outsourcing bid until the proposal figures had been fudged to show more savings.
According to a Sydney Morning Herald report, a law firm was initially brought in as an outsourcing consultant and later as a strategic adviser. It ended up providing technical assistance. What the Sydney Morning Herald failed to note was that this is how consultancy firms work. The process even has a name: business development. That means that no matter what a consultant is brought in to do, from guessing the future to sacking staff or telling women to have babies faster, their primary purpose is to get more business for their company.
The attractive feature of consultants, whether hired by governments or corporations, is that they will say things that are simply too awful for a permanent manager to say, such as advice on how to sack workers or how to make their lives hell. Consultants cost a fortune, but it's better than doing the dirty work yourself.
This would all be a problem if the purpose of the federal government's information technology outsourcing had been to save money. The real purpose was to turn government information technology spending into a source of profit for big business.
BY GREG HARRIS