Government to scrap COI, axe up to 1,000 communication jobs
Create new centre, then cut staff loose
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UK.gov plans to replace the Central Office of Information with a new executive agency that deals with the government's marketing and advertising activity.
The scrapping of the COI, which began life in 1946 and operates as a Trading Fund, will lead to further job cuts.
More than 1,000 comms staff will be cut loose in an extensive civil servant cull, after the government released a series of recommendations based on a 158-page review of its £1.01bn annual comms spend, of which £540m is handled directly by the COI.
"The report recommends that that COI becomes the Government Communication Centre (GCC) for all direct communication, within the Cabinet Office during 2011/12. From 2012/13 it is recommended that the GCC then aggregates direct communications staff working across the Government Communications Network," the Cabinet Office said today.
Matt Tee, the permanent secretary for government communication who leaves his £160,000-£165,000 per year post this month, carried out the review.
"The priority to reduce the fiscal deficit has led to a tightening of control of communication expenditure. The marketing and advertising freeze approvals procedure has introduced close central scrutiny of how communication is scoped and how return on the investment is measured," wrote Tee in his review.
"Government policy also envisages fewer but more effective communications with a greater role for partners, both civic and commercial. These drivers will inevitably mean that government communication budgets and staff numbers will be smaller."
He recommended that around 1,000 jobs should be axed from the government's current communication workforce of 6,848. He claimed such a move would save £54m per year.
However, the job cull won't take place immediately. Instead the government wants to put the GCC in place first and then reduce the number of staff on its communication books starting next year.
The government should be pushing for "greater use of digital channels in direct communication and that digital considerations should be built into all communication activity from the start," Tee added.
"Government's use of digital also extends beyond communication and marketing activity into areas such as digital policy, frameworks and contracts, customer services and hosting platforms. Digital policy leads will clearly retain responsibility for their specific remits, but would be able to outsource related marketing and communication services, just as the Cabinet Office has outsourced certain digital tasks to COI in the past." ®
COMMENTS
@So
No these are highly skilled employees who are vitally needed by industry.
Everytime anybody complains about civil services salaries it is pointed out how it's necessary to pay lots to attract the very best.
So really previous governments have been crippling industry by siphoning off the best talent to work for the civil service. Now these people are free to work in the private sector productivity growth should be enormous
So.
Thats fewer people paying taxes, buying rail fares etc. and more claiming dole, mortgage insurance etc.
This country will be paying the price of the bankers greed for decades - and it's going to wreck a lot of lives.
The banks should have been allowed to fail.
ttfn
Food chain
@Martin 19: "Blaming 'bankers' is like there being a plane crash, and you beating a local lorry driver over the head because he's one of the "transport men" who are 'responsible'."
No using your analogy, blaming 'bankers' is like blaming the pilot who wasn't paying enough attention whist at the controls, which directly led to the plane flying into the mountain. Why they weren't paying enough attention was because as usual, to them everything in their little self-interested world view was fine. Their money was rolling in (as they were screwing money out of people who couldn't afford to pay it back right/left and centre), plus they were preoccupied with thinking about things like buying that new holiday home with all the money they were earning, perhaps also where to go on holiday, that nice new top of the range sports car ... then suddenly, oh shit, what's that in the window, its trees, on a mountain!, then BAMM!!
The problem now is the pilots lived and in their usual self-absorbed and self-interested greed to prosper, they are now eating the survivors of their crash, and in the process, their endless greed is making them ever fatter off the staving survivors!
Also these Government 1,000 communication jobs were more Government zombies who were also getting ever fatter off the staving survivors!
Guess where we are on their food chain! ... Time to run!
Drinks icon, as its Friday! :) … and for some reason, I feel like running to the pub. ;) … (I've been on my zombie overlords menu enough this week!).
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