The DOBlog

Economy on the slide. House prices falling. Talk of having to raise taxes to cover essential day to day costs of running the government. Rumblings of voluntary redundancies in the Health Services, grumblings of the need to ensure more productivity in public services before further benchmarking payments are made… and all this after an election season where we were assured it was only a matter of time before we were all walking on water and had free flying cars (well not quite, but you get the picture).

But our noble Taoiseach (already one of the highest paid elected officials in Europe) is today awaiting the announcement of a pay rise to bring his €260,000 a year salary up to something that a fella can live on in today’s Ireland.

Update: RTE now have the figures… The Taoiseach’s new salary is €310,000, a 14% pay rise.

To put it another way, the CEO of a large corporation seemingly lied to shareholders at an AGM (the election) about the performance of the business, failing to disclose adequately (if at all) the level of material risk associated with future performance of the enterprise, or recognise the levels of chronic mismanagement within his executive team and now he is to be rewarded with a payrise (which also means a raise in his already generous pension as Taoiseach).

George W. Bush has a total ‘package’ including expenses and allowances of around $470,000. At today’s exchange rate that comes to just over €330,000. Will Bertie get more than him in ‘raw’ cash? The salary component of GW’s package comes to just over €280,000 at today’s exchange rates - only €20,000 more than Bertie.

Pretty soon POTUS will want a raise as well, just to keep up with el Berto.

Irish Government ministers and other TDs (as well as judges) will also get a bump in the bank account as a result of this review.

If the Taoiseach is serious about leading the country through a period of solemn fiscal tightening before his party claim saviour status in the next election then he should start with himself. Reject the payrise… Send a signal to his ministerial colleagues that it is entirely their own choice if they want to take the pay rise, if they do they’ll be on their own in the PR stakes.

With one simple gesture he could rout the opposition and reclaim his ‘man-o-the-people’ image before buggering off to a content retirement.

Yeah… right… like that will happen.

Update: Quelle surprise. A pay rise of 14% for the Taoiseach, 15.5% for the Tanaiste (who is also our minister for Finance) and a raft of further increases for other roles and we find ourselves in a position where the management of the country cannot now really argue for ‘belt-tightening’ or wage restraint within social partnership, at least not without falling over giggling.

Let them eat cake indeed.

A while back I reviewed Trademark2.0 by R.Todd Stephens. The book is now available from Amazon.co.uk…

My review of the book can be found here…

The Irish Green Party recently entered coalition with the Fianna Fail party to form a government in Ireland. As part of this coalition, we now have a Green Party TD (member of parliament) as Minister for the Environment.

Today, Mr Gormley came out in favour of Electronic Voting. Well, actually that isn’t entirely correct.. he has stated that he would like to see electronic voting in Ireland and would not like to abandon the investment made in the e-voting machines we have in mothballs if they can be adapted to secure public confidence.

He appears to have missed the breaking news from the Netherlands where the Courts have ruled that the use of their e-voting machines is illegal because they can be hacked.

Personally I think that the Minister should step back from the white elephant of these e-voting machines and take a look at the information quality requirments of the entire election process.

1. Our Electoral Register is in a shambles. A key root cause is the design of the electoral register forms… they are simply appalling and do not capture information in a clear and error-proofed manner. A holistic Information Management strategy needs to be developed and implemented, along with adequate governance, funding and resources to help ensure high quality of information in the Electoral Register. This will likely require changes to legislation to allow for improvements in the Electoral Register processes and to clarify responsibilities and accountabilities for the management of this critical information.
2. A clear and unbiased view needs to be taken of how best we can ensure a verifiable voting process so that votes dont’ go missing, get tampered with or are just not counted. Pencil and paper means that voters who mark the box with their preference can see their preference going into the ballot box… that is a level of confidence in the process that currently isn’t matched by e-voting.

Rather than continuing to piss around with the e-voting machines, I would much rather the Minister take a strong leadership stance as regards the quality of the Electoral Register and its related processes. His predecessor tried to pass the buck and it would seem Mr Gormley hasn’t yet grasped the reins (sorry for mixing my metaphors like that). The investment in the key set of master data for our electoral processes - the Register of Electors - would be a much better spend of (increasingly constrained) government funds (ie the funds we taxpayers provide).

In business people take investment decisions every day and spend money with the goal of making more back. But every day business managers have to draw a line under poor investments and walk away from the business idea to spend their resources on more valuable opportunities. Seeking to spend more money on a bad idea in the hope that enough money might make it a good idea is just bad business. A number of people I know, myself included, have walked away from business ideas because they weren’t working or could not be made to work with the resources available. Yes it is a pain in the arse, yes there is a sense of failure, but at least you can move forward knowing you have made a tough decision and can learn from it.

Or perhaps Minister Gormely is auditioning for a part in a remake of Monty Python & The Holy Grail? How many castles will we need to build in the e-voting swamp before they stop sinking?

I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show ‘em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So, I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp, but the fourth one… stayed up! And that’s what you’re gonna get, lad: the strongest castle in these islands.

Investing in key infrastructure and assets (the electoral register and its related processes and governance) which will be used either in the ‘as is’ world (pencil and paper voting) or the ‘to be world’ (the utopia of secure and seamless e-voting) is a better investment of resources.

Chasing the Fianna Fail pipe dream of e-voting simply because it is what the bigger boys at the Cabinet table want you to smacks of an inability to see the wood for the trees and prioritise what will work in the lifetime of the Government (improving the Register and its governance) over what will never work in the lifetime of the Government (e-voting machines).