It’s already in the Plan

I will tone down a bit. The low light of the 'meeting' last week was the recurring excuse of ‘it’s in the plan, it’s already been looked into, and it’s going to be implemented, and so on’. Some of these excuses are for some serious in-actions on the part of the responsible organizations resulting in massive problems and public nuisances. These slip-ups if were to be discussed in the British Parliament the responsible parties would get a massive mauling from the other members of Parliament.

Talking about what might contribute to the problems is the excessive use of consultants to come up with the solutions. One quick way for improvement: stop hiring so many consultants. There are many instances where a project is poorly defined and a consultant hired to carry it out, but because of poor planning little or nothing of benefit is derived. Where are those officers (who have been trained overseas to attend specific degree and Master programmes) who should be doing the exact job? Rather they become paper pusher and they do not do the work, but hire very expensive consultants.

From my experience, consultants are many times over-rated and they have a tendency to repeat. The consultant will finish a contract and leave. Then if the project faces problems with the product or service, the consultant will only come back if another contract is agreed to. However, when an employee does that same work, the employee is more accountable to the outcome. And, of course, the cost is only a fraction of what most consulting contracts cost. The irony is sometimes by hiring consultant make the heads or directors a rationale to inflate budgets and appear even more important.