In addition to its personal advisory engagements, the Australian authorities’s in-house consulting arm has been guiding federal businesses on the way to handle exterior consultants, and their slippery techniques.
Distributed final yr however now publicly accessible due to a Freedom of Info (FoI) request pursued by the Canberra Occasions, the Australian Authorities Consulting (AGC) ‘playbook’ gives finest practices for managing the life-cycle of tasks.
Most notably nonetheless, one part features a warning that the skilled senior marketing consultant promoting the corporate wares is unlikely to be a type of spending a lot time on the venture itself, however could also be again for the “sell-on” after getting their foot within the door.
Higher referred to as “land and develop” in industry-speak, the AGC playbook notes that “after spending time in your organisation, ‘the marketing consultant’ could share their views about additional work.” Whereas this doubtless unsolicited pitch would possibly present beneficial insights, the recipient is urged to ask “probing questions” whereas listening intently in order to grasp the issue that’s making an attempt to be resolved.
As to the preliminary pitch, the playbook cautions: “Senior folks (often ‘companions’ or ‘principals’) are usually concerned in a number of tasks directly, and are additionally required to domesticate new purchasers and win enterprise. Consultancies can enhance the venture profit-margin by decreasing the calls for on senior folks in favour of consultants with much less expertise.”
Subtitled ‘Mastering engagement with exterior consultants to attain worth for cash and construct APS functionality”, the AGC playbook is a complement to the federal government’s APS Strategic Commissioning Framework, however comes throughout as considerably patronising and faintly ridiculous in its occasional depiction of wide-eyed procurement officers duped by predatory outsiders.
It might simply be a mirrored image of the tone and elegance of language adopted for inside APS communications, nevertheless it’s uncertain anybody concerned in multi-million greenback public decision-making is blind to the up-selling techniques of huge consulting. Effectively, no less than hopefully, in any other case the federal government has a lot greater issues to unravel than first anticipated.
Slightly, a mix of different components appear extra prone to be the trigger for any suggestion of beforehand wasteful procurement practices, not the least of which is division leaders being so understaffed and overwhelmed beneath the final authorities – once more proposing to slash 45,000 APS jobs – that they only farmed out every part as rapidly as doable to get the job completed.
Different, non-libellous, points would possibly embrace the relationships constructed between in-house decision-makers and exterior suppliers, a better-the-devil-you-know method to extending contracts, and the revolving door between the APS and consulting {industry} as to previously-established relationships. A fast take a look at ‘insider’ discussions on Reddit confirms a mixture of these components to be the possible case.
One level nonetheless, a lot of the steerage forwarded within the AGC playbook must be extraneous, given the Strategic Commissioning Framework, stating: “Your company should handle any conflicts of curiosity and/or probity points the place a marketing consultant gives recommendation on further work, and contemplate the implications of a provider working above and beneath the road on a given venture.”
