The South Australian Government will cut 4,000 jobs from the public sector as it rolls out its new Public Sector Renewable Program aimed at ensuring the delivery of better quality and more innovative community and public services.

 

The Government announced it has been working with national and international experts on the design of the program, which, according to Premier Jay Weatherill, draws on practices in both the public and private sectors that have been proven to work.

 

“Recent debate has been about the size of the public sector, when we need to be talking about the quality of the public sector,” Mr Weatherill said.

 

“This program is about striving for a higher quality public sector.

 

“We are in a constrained financial environment where we must make savings, but we still live in a community that has ever-increasing demands for services.

 

“That equation won’t work unless we do things differently and the Public Sector Renewal Program is about making those changes across all of our public services.”

 

The Premier outlined three main objectives of the plan:

 

  • LIFT the quality of services provided, while enabling savings targets to be met, including reducing public sector numbers by 4000.
  • ENABLE the public sector to implement a less risk-averse culture that is more focussed on the needs of the community and less focussed on bureaucratic processes.
  • MAKE the public sector a more dynamic and better place to be employed.

 

The next phase of the work in the plan will be led by a taskforce, which will work closely with Economic Development Board chair Raymond Spencer, and will be led by Department of Manufacturing, Innovation, Trade, Resources and Energy deputy chief executive Ms Erma Ranieri.

 

Under the program, there will be demonstration projects in four agencies launched in November.

 

By the end of next year, every portfolio agency will have been involved in the program.

 

The projects will be directed at improved service delivery, staff capability development, local empowerment, productivity improvement and budget savings.