We
anticipate a few more recriminations over the abject performance of the Welsh
government's Genesis Wales 2
scheme which, according to press reports, has failed in its aim of
helping 20,000 people find work or get qualifications.
While opposition
AMs are regurgitating the usual verbiage about “lessons needing to be learned”,
local government sources were last night insisting that the shortcomings were a result of intransigence by Cathays Park apparatchiks. The claims are that WG
staff insisted on large chunks of programme development work being outsourced to
small companies in order to comply with other associated but different economic
development policy targets.
The
result of an attempt to kill two birds with one stone, say pissed-off council providers,
is that the Welsh government ended up with a dead duck.
Are these the same officials who former minister Andrew Davies claimed were subverting Welsh government economic policies through deliberate sloth? Nothing much seems to have changed since his day, do it?
ReplyDeleteActually it seems to be the opposite approach that has undone things. The emailed comment we received from local government mole is that eager civil servants thought they could please their political masters by implementing two sets of ‘complimentary’ initiatives in a single scheme. It turns out that weren’t such a good match after all and that one measure managed to screw up implementation of the other – or something like that. The same source claims that all this was known early last year but that the project was allowed a reboot in the hope that things could be sorted.
DeleteIt is entirely credible to blame WG and WEFO civil servants. It is also entirely credible to blame staff and managers within Genesis 2 delivery units within local government.
ReplyDeleteWhen will people get their heads round the fact that working with the "workless", trying to improve people's skills and prospects for employment is so far down the regeneration pecking order, so low status within strategic plans, that it is almost ceretain to be poor quality and badly delivered by less than knife sharp staff.
Efforts need to be one step removed from local government and at least 10 from the Welsh Government! Who, incidentally, are now suggesting a pilot within a "geographic specific consortia" model which will combine the Workways, Genesis and Skills For Industry projects. Two of which are dead and one of which is bumping along the bottom. Go figure!