Court of Audit report critical of Flemish government staff savings and outsourcing: “People feel abandoned” | Domestic

Like the previous Flemish governments, the current Jambon government also imposed personnel cuts on the Flemish government: 1,440 fewer employees, good for an annual wage cost of 75 million euros. Figures show that this ambition had already been 93 percent realized by the end of 2022, the Court notes.

But in reality, the total number of employees at the Flemish government has increased slightly, more specifically from 29,011 at the end of 2019 to 29,119 at the end of 2022. This is mainly because a number of services – such as Growing up, the pilots at the Maritime Services and Coastal Agency, staff of the justice houses – has been kept out of the cost-cutting exercise.

According to the Court of Audit, the space that has become available for personnel savings has been “used for additional recruitment for additional assignments under the coalition agreement, crisis situations (such as the Covid-19 crisis or the Ukraine crisis, ed.) and the recovery plan.”

Due to the personnel savings, government services also have to outsourcing more and more things. Some findings seem downright alarming. Not only do two-thirds of the entities outsource tasks due to personnel savings, in 25 of the 35 entities this also concerns ‘core tasks’. More than half of the entities also indicate that they “cannot sufficiently guarantee internal know-how” due to outsourcing.

The outsourcing costs are clearly increasing. An example: for the entities that are connected to the accounting system of the Flemish government (OraFin), the cost of deploying physical persons related to outsourcing has increased from 449 million euros to 612 million euros in 2022. Striking detail: the The cost-effectiveness of outsourcing is hardly analyzed and where the analysis was done, it turned out that the outsourcing was never more cost-effective.

Another painful observation: in most entities where savings have been made, there is one increase in workload, work stress and burnout. “The entities attribute this largely to staff savings, but also to increased or more complex tasks and the COVID-19 crisis,” the Court said.

According to the report, absences due to illness, work accidents and family reasons in 2022 were also at the highest level since 2014. Since 2019, the number of long-term sick people, the number of employees working part-time for medical reasons and the duration of absence have more than doubled.

The Court of Audit concludes that the current round of savings was “mainly designed and realized quantitatively”. “The intended ambitions for a lean, high-performance, citizen-oriented and accessible government have not been structured, but have been achieved on an ad hoc and limited basis,” it continues.

“Green has always been critical for blind savings. And the Court of Audit’s investigation confirms what we feared: the successive cuts by the center-right Flemish governments have had a deep impact and have major consequences for the services provided to citizens.” This is what party leader Mieke Schauvliege said in a response to the Court of Audit’s investigation.

Schauvliege recalls that the research came about at Groen’s insistence. “Jambon’s blind cuts make people feel abandoned: the personnel cuts at the healthcare inspectorate have led to human dramas in childcare and elderly care, the environmental inspectorate has a shortage of people to enforce environmental rules and while the need for new and renovated social housing is becoming increasingly larger, the Flemish government only receives a fraction of the budget spent on the construction of social housing.”

According to the Green faction leader, the next Flemish government must stop blind savings through the “failed cheese slicing method” and make its core tasks and services to the citizen a priority again.

Vooruit also lashes out at the Flemish government. “The Flemish government has phased out its own administration in recent years. And that has clear negative consequences for its operation,” says Flemish faction leader Hannelore Goeman (Vooruit). “Flemish people can no longer count on the government for fundamental core tasks. The Flemish government is poorly managed, the Flemish are worse off. Always paying more for less quality and poorer service. That will be the legacy that Jan Jambon leaves behind.”

Flemish Member of Parliament Thijs Verbeurgt points out that the Flemish Government massively outsourced its core tasks to consultants and other private companies, without structural quality assurance. “In times of crisis, external support must be possible. But if at the same time its own internal knowledge is reduced, the government becomes completely dependent on expensive consultants. And this blind deployment of consultants and external advisors is not being followed up structurally today. There is therefore little insight into the consequences or outcome of this service. Where it is monitored, the cost-benefit analysis appears to be unanimously negative.”