Q&A with departing States cuts adviser

Tuesday 06 October 2015

Just seven months after taking on the job of advising the States of Jersey on how to make the cuts and efficiencies that they need to balance the books against the backdrop of a £145 million black hole in public finances, Kevin Keen has walked away from the job.

Hired in a blizzard of publicity in March to add an independent voice to the process of making the public sector more efficient, the news that he’s stepping down comes on the same day that ministers take their Medium Term Financial Plan to the States for debate.

Mr Keen told Bailiwick Express why he was stepping down...

Bailiwick Express: “So, what’s going on?”

Kevin Keen: “I have done a piece of work and that’s it. Clearly, they have got a challenging period ahead of them to deliver the MTFP and its not possible to do it in a painless way. The whole community has got to shoulder some of the pain of addressing the deficit. I agree with people who say that it can't just be focussed on the lower paid, or public sector workers or anyone else. We will just have to wait and see how the Council of Ministers deal with these things like the Health Charge and make sure that there is some equal sharing because I think that is important. And departments cannot have 'special pleading' because there is no department that's 100% efficient, and there never will be."

BE: “From the outside, it’s looked like you had an uphill challenge from the start.”

KK: “I think that is fair. At the beginning it seemed to be a real urgency to get the change done, which is what we need. But as time has gone on that urgency has subsided as the whole thing has disappeared into the big process. I didn’t want to become the waste of money that I was trying to help them prevent.

BE: “Would you been happy have stayed on if you felt you could have achieved something?”

KK: “I might have been if I had felt that I could add some value or make some change but that was not possible. I do not see writing reports as being a) my kind of thing, or b) being particularly effective. At the end of the day, it’s about getting stuff done rather than writing reports. And I did not have the position or the authority to do that. I’m not complaining about that, it’s just the reality. It’s up to the management to do it, and if you go back to the presentation that I made at the Institute of Directors, I said it’s up to the officers to deliver.”

BE: “Given your experience over the last few months, how optimistic are you about the States’ ability to make the kind of reforms and efficiencies that ministers are targeting?”

KK: “I would not say that I was optimistic about it. I would say there is a long way to go before you could be optimistic and they need to get on with it really.”

BE: “That sounds like there’s a certain amount of frustration on your part.”

KK: “I suppose that’s fair. I found the organisation – actually it’s not one organisation, and that’s part of the issue – some times there’s a lack of clarity about who is in charge of it, particularly when it comes to departments, so it can take a long time to get what would be a relatively simple thing in a business.

In some ways that’s a good safeguard, but in another way that is a terrible thing because when it comes to people, they don’t know where they stand.

BE: “Are you happy with what you achieved?”

KK: “I never went into it in an optimistic ‘look what I can do’ particularly confident way. I did it because I was asked to help. But in that role there are limitations as to what can actually be achieved by someone who is an adviser. It’s up to officers to deliver on these things. I think I’ve probably provided some good advice and I have worked hard on it but it is down to more than just me to get the organisation sorted out.”