As first published in Crikey.
Nick Pickard and Ben Eltham write:
"Thanks to Mr Rudd's efficiency dividend, I have been deemed 'excess to requirements'," the group email began.
And so it goes for 13 public servants of the Australia Council for the Arts who have been given the tap on the shoulder in response to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s enforced efficiency dividend.
But there is no love lost between the nation’s major arts funding body and artists who have been crying out for less bureaucracy for years. Particularly individual artists.
In total, 28 people are leaving the Australia Council through a combination of voluntary and non-voluntary redundancies, reducing the overall staff numbers from 150 in 2007/08 to 122 this coming financial year. It makes the Council one of the leading lights in Rudd’s commitment to save $1.8 billion across the entire public service.
Various fearful emails from disgruntled staff should start making the rounds, but artists should be the last to complain, with CEO Kathy Keele making a full commitment to not cut grants.
"We are putting in place measures to maintain our funding for artists and arts organisations by streamlining the organisation and making $2 million in administrative savings," she said at the time of the 2% efficiency dividend announcement.
Yesterday, Keele told Crikey that a formal business process review ran from January to March this year which "identified seven key areas for efficiency improvements: travel, finance, property services, grants assessment and management, project management, relationships with arts organisations and the research function."
The key concern for artists though is the business of giving them money. And with the bureaucracy stuck just a stone’s throw away from the News Ltd empire in Sydney's Surry Hills, cost cuts will mean those in other regions of the country have even less access to council staff.
Indeed, there is a key proposal in the business process review to "reduce the amount of face-to-face meeting time and associated travel cost for the peer assessment panels through online assessment and other processes," Keele said.
But that has always been a problem for artists not close to Sydney ever since the Council was established by the Whitlam Government in 1973. In fact, a blanket enforcement of artists to go online to apply and acquit their grants may actually create a more level playing field.
To streamline the grant application and acquittal process, the Australia Council is moving the way of the world and shifting it to a focus on "online management of the grants process, specifically online grants reporting and online applications from next year," Keele said.
Future challenges facing the Council, however, are looming. It’s all very well to trim the fat, but if Rudd decides to extend the efficiency dividend further you could see an organisation start digging substantially into grant finances. And for arts organisations who are already running on the smell of an oily rag, particularly in the small to medium sector, any cost squeeze will bury their future.
Maybe that’s why the Council has had the foresight to be "best in show" with the efficiency dividend request. It could produce favours down the line.
Nick Pickard and Ben Eltham write:
"Thanks to Mr Rudd's efficiency dividend, I have been deemed 'excess to requirements'," the group email began.
And so it goes for 13 public servants of the Australia Council for the Arts who have been given the tap on the shoulder in response to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s enforced efficiency dividend.
But there is no love lost between the nation’s major arts funding body and artists who have been crying out for less bureaucracy for years. Particularly individual artists.
In total, 28 people are leaving the Australia Council through a combination of voluntary and non-voluntary redundancies, reducing the overall staff numbers from 150 in 2007/08 to 122 this coming financial year. It makes the Council one of the leading lights in Rudd’s commitment to save $1.8 billion across the entire public service.
Various fearful emails from disgruntled staff should start making the rounds, but artists should be the last to complain, with CEO Kathy Keele making a full commitment to not cut grants.
"We are putting in place measures to maintain our funding for artists and arts organisations by streamlining the organisation and making $2 million in administrative savings," she said at the time of the 2% efficiency dividend announcement.
Yesterday, Keele told Crikey that a formal business process review ran from January to March this year which "identified seven key areas for efficiency improvements: travel, finance, property services, grants assessment and management, project management, relationships with arts organisations and the research function."
The key concern for artists though is the business of giving them money. And with the bureaucracy stuck just a stone’s throw away from the News Ltd empire in Sydney's Surry Hills, cost cuts will mean those in other regions of the country have even less access to council staff.
Indeed, there is a key proposal in the business process review to "reduce the amount of face-to-face meeting time and associated travel cost for the peer assessment panels through online assessment and other processes," Keele said.
But that has always been a problem for artists not close to Sydney ever since the Council was established by the Whitlam Government in 1973. In fact, a blanket enforcement of artists to go online to apply and acquit their grants may actually create a more level playing field.
To streamline the grant application and acquittal process, the Australia Council is moving the way of the world and shifting it to a focus on "online management of the grants process, specifically online grants reporting and online applications from next year," Keele said.
Future challenges facing the Council, however, are looming. It’s all very well to trim the fat, but if Rudd decides to extend the efficiency dividend further you could see an organisation start digging substantially into grant finances. And for arts organisations who are already running on the smell of an oily rag, particularly in the small to medium sector, any cost squeeze will bury their future.
Maybe that’s why the Council has had the foresight to be "best in show" with the efficiency dividend request. It could produce favours down the line.
13 comments:
Here's my efficiency target for the Australia Council:
1 Person (full time) to answer the phone and get me coffee
1 Person (part time) to open the mail and sort it in order of priority/time sensitivity
1 Person (full time) to read the grant submissions and put them in order of cultural merit (read artistic worthiness)
1 Person (part time) to cross-examine the list to make sure head-job-ability has not been compromised beyond salvation
1 Person (part time) to take the rubbish out and clean the office (but this person could be job-shared with Opera Australia up the road).
Imagine how much more money there's be for ARTISTS then!!!
Defund the dinosaur now and start again.
Does anyone actually know what the Australia Council do? Like, REALLY do? And what it is that takes that number of people to do it?
This is from their website:
The Australia Council for the Arts is the Australian Government's arts funding and advisory body.
It enriches the lives of Australians and their communities by supporting the creation and enjoyment of the arts.
The Australia Council cultivates the nation’s creativity by investing in artists and arts organisations working in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts, community partnerships, dance, literature, music, theatre, visual arts and multi-artform practices.
In 2006-07, the Australia Council provided $156 million in total funding through 1799 grants, projects and initiatives to artists and arts organisations. This funding supported the creation of 4476 new artistic works, the presentation of 3636 new artistic works and 9.3 million attendances at arts events.
The Australia Council:
* invests in the creativity of the nation’s artists and opportunities for all Australians to enjoy their work
* supports Australian artists and arts organisations through funding programs
* builds the capacity of the arts sector by providing advice and operational resources
* researches the arts and culture to underpin our programs and the development of arts policy
* develops cultural policy and advises governments on issues relating to the arts
* facilitates partnerships between artists, governments and business that build a stronger arts sector
* promotes the value of the arts and helps build new audiences at home and overseas
* advocates with governments and the community to increase the role of the arts in the lives of Australians.
"As firt published in Crikey"?
This is bad news for everyone, including artists. As someone who has worked for a similar institution exposed to the ‘efficiency dividend’ let me tell you that everything will get far less efficient. That means artists will wait longer for answers and listen to muzak for longer if they try to call the OzCo because fewer people will be doing the same amount of work.
Why do you think the same number of people took voluntary redundancies as were forced to leave? There are two possible reasons – 1) There was a generous package offered for them to go (i.e very poor and inefficient use of taxpayers’ money) and 2) They knew they would be screwed if they stayed because – despite what the ‘why are there so many bureaucrats?’ team has to say – OzCo staff get remunerated very poorly already for the work they do.
The ‘efficiency dividend’ is a death by a thousand cuts. In this kind of workplace morale also dies the death of a thousand cuts, as people wonder if they will be the next item ‘excess to requirements’. And you know the kind of service you get from people like this?...
The logical extension of the efficiency dividend in operation, assuming the grant funding amount does not change, is that in a few decades there will be one project officer administering all the grants in all categories (also bear in mind the population will have grown while the funding to the bureaucracy has shrunk, so there will be a greater number of funding applications each year). In this scenario, an artist could wait a many years to hear the outcome of one funding application. For any artist who thinks the ED is a good thing – in what way is it efficient, and how will this assist artists?
If I referred to the ‘why are there so many bureaucrats?’ camp in a dismissive way this is because they usually are a pretty ignorant and lazy subset of the population. Yes, there are absolutely some good ways to save public money, but this is not it. Complain louder about a government who spends $100 million on ads to sell an unpopular piece of legislation. Call for the jobs of the dozen or so ‘researchers’ the previous prime minister hired through his department whose sole aim was to dig dirt on the opposition before the last election. It’s all very well to call for the ‘defunding of the dinosaur’, provided you have a few constructive ideas on how else it should be done.
I’m one of the few people on the planet who has read the Australia Council Act, mostly because I went for a job there (I didn’t take it because as a full-time grants assessment officer ten years out of university with a wealth of experience they offered about $35,000 – ooh, they have it so easy there at the OzCo those bureaucrats…). I would recommend anyone who has an opinion on the OzCo should first read the Act because very few demonstrate any understanding of how it works and what its functions are. Thanks Anonymous for cutting and pasting the OzCo’s marketing drivel above but the functions of the OzCo are spelt out in the Act and cannot be reduced to a few bullet points. If you want t know what they ‘really REALLY do’ you’re gonna have to suck it up and read the Act – which will be boring and, potentially, extremely difficult for you. You may then have something interesting to say. You will find it for free on the world wide web. Happy reading.
Chairman Rudd is more than a fiscal conservative, he has embraced some of the worst ideas of the Howard years as simply the way things are done now. I’m afraid he used up al his vision in the first 6 months of office…
SAJ, I'm not sure what the 'favours down the line' refers to, but you can bet if the OzCo proves it can make drastic cuts without any noticeable change to the way it operates it will be rewarded with a set of far harsher funding cuts next financial year, and we'll reach that one project officer target that much quicker.
There are factual errors in the Ben Eltham and Nicholas Pickard piece ‘Kevin Rudd's efficiency dividend hits the Australia Council’ (crikey.com June 27, 2008) which I would like to correct for the benefit of crikey readers. Of the 28 people who are leaving or have left the Australia Council in 2007-08, only 13 were due to their roles being made ‘redundant’. The other 15 left of their own accord during the year – natural attrition – or because the projects they were working on ended. The second error of fact is about Australia Council staff spending less ‘face time’ working with artists around Australia. The reduction in ‘face-to-face meeting time’ refers exclusively to travel to Sydney by members of the various peer assessment panels. It is one of the new measures to streamline the grant making process; reducing administrative costs (airfares, accommodation and per diems), taking advantage of new online technologies to assess applications and most importantly, ensuring that the available funds go to Australian artists to make art.
That photograph is clearly of an underage girl. I am certain she has nothing on under that much-too-sheer gown. I'm calling my two best friends, Andrew Scipione and Kev Rudd. It is a revolting photograph and you should be in jail.
With all due respect Kathy, everyone knows that it's about time these interstate Junkets were culled at every practicable level of government. In this New Techonology era, you can have a video conference call if everyone wants to see each other. Or send an email ... with an attachment.
There is a distinct groundswell of community support for a new funding hierarchy for The Arts in this country ... and mutant beaurocracies using far too much of the scarce funding pie for Junkets masquerading as "face-to-face" meetings is only the tip of the iceberg, as it were.
If the "natural attrition" ratio is such as it is, I wonder whether in fact staff at the Australia Council saw the iceberg before any of the rest of us did?
Anyway you care to look at it, it's a sinking ship. And it's time. Odd, then, that it will have taken a one-term Labor Government to do it.
'beaurocracies'?
Maybe 'bureaucracies'?
Thank you bb, but the ability to spell is not an imperative here at SAJ ... and I wouldn't be the firt one to point that out.
I think SAJ himself as made it clear that neither grammar, syntax or spelling is a pre-requisite for being a writer for the Telegraph.
He who casts the first stone... etc etc
'as'? 'has'????
Thanks for the delicious timing.
I meant 'as, SAJ, that's my cockney accent, innit?
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