The appointment of Mario Cutajar as the head of the civil service after the election was met with some raised eyebrows, mostly because of his somewhat militant reputation as deputy secretary general of the General Workers’ Union until 2002. Vanessa Macdonald challenged his performance since then.

About six months ago, a report was drawn up which came up with 50 recommendations on ways to improve the civil service. It was never made public. Why not?

It was an internal report, presented to the government in 2012, which focussed on 25 years of recivil service reform. Although not made public, we talked openly about what was in it. As a new administration, we made our own assessments and agreed with many of the report’s conclusions – including one which said the public service has lost the enthusiasm for reform.

The recommendations were not cast in stone. For the first time, we are consulting with heads and assistant heads in all the ministries, trying to communicate what we believe needs to be changed. And there are a lot of changes to be made.

My alarm bells go off when people say they are ‘consulting’ as that is usually a euphemism for ‘nothing is going to happen’. What are you actually doing?

The last Budget showed the impact of the increased accountability. For the first time, the public service was able to review the measures from Budget 2014, where we succeeded and where we did not.

Also, various ministries simplified processes. For example, the government knows when you were born and when you will retire, but there is no data management. Why should you have to actually apply for your pension? So in the first year, we allocated resources to be able to manage the data.

Another initiative was to look at recruitment. We would entrust a government entity with millions of euro but make it go to the Public Administration Human Resources Office (PAHRO) to employ a clerk. It was just ridiculous. So we compiled a manual and laid down the need for a business plans, which would be approved by the Finance Ministry and PAHRO. As long as you are within those limits, there is no need to refer to PAHRO.

There was a reason for the system. Employment in the public service was always potentially open to abuse.

For a clerk? Do you honestly believe there was no abuse just because PAHRO was there? How would they know who is being brought in?

It would only approve the recruitment, not which particular person. These controls were there to curtail abuse, as you said, as well as to cut down on overemployment and to ensure transparency.

But did that happen? Can you really say that by centralising recruitment, you solved anything?

Incidentially, I have to say that HR does not exist in the civil services, it is just payroll and personnel. The last exercise in capacity building was carried out in 2012 and I stopped it. It turned out to be an exercise in marketing: if you were able to sell your idea, then you would get what you wanted. But that should not be the criteria on which you should succeed.

There needs to be a delegation of authority and people should be held responsible and accountable. Financing has already been made accountable through the Fiscal Responsibility Act, but next year we will focus on the delegation of duties in ministries – in other words, permanent secretaries. The permanent secretary is not a supervisor but the ministry’s chief executive officer. He or she needs to ensure that things are being done in the right way. Recruitment or the creation of new positions should be left directly to the permanent secretariat of each ministry.

One of the first things you did when appointed was to ask for the resignation of all the permanent secretaries. You have defended this before but the perception remains that you were vindictive and that the move was politically motivated.

It was the right thing to do and we do not need to defend that. It was planned beforehand and we take responsibility for it. Looking back, I still think it was the right thing to do – as I did at the time. First of all, I cannot understand how it can be seen as being politically motivated when the people who were there were also politically appointed!

The structure that we have in place must be understood. You have the minister with the chief of staff on one side and the political team. And on the other side, you have the permanent secretary with the administration...

We were brought up on the British comedy Yes, Minister. And the principle was a split between the chief of staff and the permanent secretary who was supposed to provide continuity between one legislature and another. And to tweak the minister when there was a conflict between the political and national interest.

Continuity does not come from a person but from a structure. When a government changes there were hiccups...

There were months when no decisions were taken. It took ages to find files...

All I can tell you is that dossiers are prepared at the end of a legislature and there was a hand-over. I insist that there were no hiccups. That is one of the good things about the civil service: circumstances change, governments change, people change, but the machine keeps working.

In 2008, the workforce was just over 39,500. In 2013, it went up to nearly 47,000. Weren’t we supposed to be cutting down the civil service, as it was competing for resources with the private sector?

It is not creeping up. We already explained that, if the health and education divisions need more people, we employ them, whether they are learning support assistants or nurses. They are really the only two divisions of any size where I do not ask when they come to us with requests; I just sign. And they do not come with requests for labourers. They come asking for professionals.

So the perception of a government bursting at the seams with messengers with nothing to do is no longer correct? Or with people who clock in and then disappear for the day to pursue other hobbies?

Definitely not. Of course, I am not going to say that everything is perfect. But even if you look at other governments in the EU, the workforce is growing because there is now so much regulation relating to the EU and funding. There are new circumstances which mean more people are required.

The rate of absenteeism and sick leave in the civil service is high. The MEA recently said sick leave in the public sector was twice what it is in the private sector. Are you clamping down on this?

I am convinced that sick leave is a thermometer. You need to see what the cause is; I believe it is a shortage of motivation and job satisfaction. That is what we need to focus on, and some of what we are doing now should address these issues. For example, we launched a suggestion box in October and got over 100 ideas. It may not seem like much but it is all about empowerment. When you stop asking people, they stop having ideas. Some good ideas emerged ­– two of them were put into the Budget.

There is palpable gap between where decisions are being taken and where they are implemented.

You mentioned that you do not have an HR office but just a personnel office. Is that going to change?

I am still toying with the idea. Traditional culture is a hard nut to crack, based on rules and records. I am not Don Quixote fighting windmills. If we still need the personnel function, why should I try to change that into an HR function if I would probably not succeed? It might be better to split the roles. But I am still debating this.

A few weeks ago I interviewed the Auditor General and there are clearly a lot of shortcomings in the public administration, especially when it comes to projects which end up over-budget and over-time. Do you follow them up?

In the past this was not done, but it was one of the first things I did: I asked them to pull out all the reports from the NAO and the Internal Audit and Investigations Directorate (IAID) of the past five years and to see what the recommendations were, and what was and could be done.

The first that we tackled was the Contracts Department as we knew that there was a problem. The average in 2013 in the EU for a contract award is 108 days, while our average was over 250 days. We had to do something about this.

There was a real problem when it came to EU funds as we stood to lose millions of euro. We created a fast-track system for these projects and brought the time down to 178 days. The people who carried out this pilot project are now running the Contracts Department.

We also revived the Management Efficiency Unit, which had been left languishing. It is now back at the centre of what we do, with more people who have been split between ministries.

The workforce is growing because there is now so much regulation relating to the EU and funding. There are new circumstances which mean more people are required

We realised that the problem was not the Contracts Department but the quality of the tender documentation submitted by the ministry concerned. It is all down to lack of training about the call for tender process which meant that the specifications were not as good as they could be and needed to be reviewed. So we are training people and sending them to the ministries to ensure that problems will be avoided from the outset.

How many cases did IAID handle?

There were around 50 this year. The IAID takes time to complete its reports as it is also short-staffed. It is very hard to source auditors.

I think that this is another area where we made changes and strengthened the system. It is working with permanent secretaries to ensure that its recommendations are put into practice. Or at least most of them. As from this year, the implementation of recommendations will form part of performance criteria.

It is no use setting a budget if ministries feel that they can go over budget and just get subventions... Are you going to be more rigid?

By the end of the year, we will have in place a plan on how the Budget measures will be implemented, in which quarter, and for how much. This will be followed up every month by this office and by Cabinet. At the end of six months, we will look at where we are so that, if we are off track, there is still enough time to do something about it.

Isn’t it about time that half days were phased out?

It is just a perception that everyone has half days in summer. Each department has its core hours when there is most activity­ and then you need full staff. But outside those hours, we can afford to be flexible.

But not for Customs... Traders constantly lament about the extra costs incurred outside hours etc.

That is a tradition. But the department has the tools which would enable it to be flexible if it wanted.

Are you going to insist on this being changed?

I like to leave it up to ministries to do things their way. But when I see things escalating, then we intervene. They know about it.

Isn’t it about time you gave them a bit of a kick up the backside?

Oh, I have been giving a lot of kicks up the backside. There is a queue, Vanessa, a real queue...