To: Assistant Secretary, Evaluation & Monitoring Branch
Dept. of Employment, Education & Training

Faxed on 21-Dec-93


Dear Mr XXX,

thank you for the opportunity to comment on the JobSkills programme of DEET. Please find my personal evaluation attached.

You will of course be aware that this is necessarily a highly subjective assessment, coloured - perhaps flawed - by the writer's personal circumstances. Nevertheless, you might perhaps find one or the other observation useful for your purposes.

Permit me to give you quick run-down on the particular set of circumstances that might contribute to any bias in the assessment: I am a ... permanent resident in Australia since 1971, a former XXX correspondent who found employment in this country initially as a journalist with national newspapers and magazines.

However, I became interested in computers and communications in the early 'eighties, and eventually edited and published, or co-published, two monthly magazines on communications.

In 1989, after I left a Packer subsidiary to start up a novel computer publication with the local offshoot of a multinational publisher, the bottom fell out of the computer magazine market and it was decided not to proceed. In my early fifties, I found it impossible to regain employment in mainstream journalism, and after three years of subsisting in Sydney decided to move to a place in the country which I had bought 20 years ago.

This is where I came into contact with the JobSkills scheme: as I made the rounds of local newspapers and radio stations, I was advised that I could be employed by a local soi-disant community radio station by way of the DEET programme. Since I had some hopes of at least receiving training in another field of journalism, if not eventual employment, I jumped at the chance. Nothing became of it.

After completing my term at the local JobSkills office, and seeking to establish myself locally in a consultancy role, I drew on my computer knowledge to construct a database/management information system for the programme administrator. Acceptance would have been useful since I could have used JobSkills as my first local 'reference site'. Its rejection, amid much praise (Appendix A), in favour of a similar offering by the consultant with an established relationship with the organisation did not however contribute any bias to this report...

To sum up the result of my experience: it was a total waste of time and effort on my part, and of money by DEET and its agencies. My sentiments were shared by others - about half of the participants of a subsequent JobSkills debriefing were angry and bitter about their experience under the program. Since Christmas predisposes to charitable thoughts, and because considerable time has passed since I emerged from the actual experience, the observations that follow may no longer be as trenchant as they would otherwise have been...

I would appreciate if the particulars of the case, including all references to local entities, could be kept confidential. This is because some of the comments are based on reports of other, albeit creditable, sources, and because I wish to avoid the ever present threat of libel charges.

Yours truly,


JobSkills - a 'quick-and-dirty' evaluation

Personal observations

Induction
Induction of participants into the 1993 JobSkills programme was haphazard.

There was little apparent effort to match participants' capabilities and training opportunities, as will be shown.

(This may have been due to the exigencies of a looming Federal election; some local programme administrators later told the writer a certain amount of grants money had been allocated and was to be spent quickly by 'putting bums on seats'. Political considerations may well have played a part in funds allocation, if the triple reference to the electorate of Broker, Employer and Training Provider on the JobSkills Monthly Report form is any indication.)

The qualifications of some of the administrators must be regarded as doubtful - in the writer's case, a competent and obviously concerned JobSkills administrator was brought in only halfway through the programme. (This capable person appears to have been dismissed as this is being written...)

Work experience
The writer was placed with a local community radio station to work as a journalist - the actual position was labelled something like 'clerk trainee', apparently because of union requirements.

The writer worked full-time between March 23 and September 3, at a net salary of about $190/week (after tax). The 'work experience' proved to be one of unashamed exploitation of a 'free resource', i.e. paid for by the tax-payer. As stated in a letter to the local newspaper (Appendix B), the 'community' station was routinely making use of such resources to "bootstrap" itself into a fully commercial operation. (The workings of the Broadcasting Act are a source of wonderment of its own - surely the outcomes are, as perhaps in the case of the JobSkills programme - entirely unintended!)

Workplace training
There was no effort - or indeed pretense - to provide any training in radio procedures, let alone radio journalism. Very late in the placement, and only after protracted protestations and reference to the JobSkills administrators, did the station management come to accept the fact that it was supposed to provide training. (This may reflect shortcomings in the programme administration rather than employer reluctance to contribute something to the programme.) Cursory exposure to the workings of a radio studio was then provided.



Offsite training
Off-the-job training appeared to have been structured around the requirements of the employer and the availability of instructional talent at the SkillShare level. The latter constraint may well account for the original allocation of 16 days of training in Wordperfect 5.1 (a common secretarial wordprocessing programme) for this 57-year-old computer-literate writer. (Upon his steadfast refusal, the sentence was commuted: instead he was permitted to sit out the fortnight at the SkillShare offices, producing a desktop publishing manual for the organisation!)

Two expensive three-day workshops at the Australian Film and Television School in Sydney, provided at the employer's request, were totally wasted because they presupposed previous workplace training. (The employer did not know this.)

A three-day "Train-the-Trainer" seminar in Newcastle - an ad hoc allocation to fill seats in a workshop operated by yet another government-sponsored organisation and which would otherwise have had to be cancelled - was well-conducted and judged worthwhile by the nine or ten participants.

Personal outcomes
This writer derived the following benefits from participating in the JobSkills programme:

A First-Aid Certificate

Attendance at the ATUG '93 communications industry conference (courtesy of the second excursion to AFTRS in Sydney)

Exposure to structured workplace training methods

Two University of New England study modules (on time management and adult learning) that were substituted for a cancelled second seminar in Newcastle

A better insight into the workings of government-sponsored programmes.

General observations

Participants
Judging by the reactions of other participants, particularly the dozen or so employed by the local council's engineering department, the programme may have contributed to further alienating an already disadvantaged group. In the final debriefing session, there were loud expressions of anger and resentment, in some cases articulated with political cynicism.

The main reason for the resentment shown by perhaps half of the two dozen participants appeared to be the perception that they were regarded - and treated by their foremen - as second-class citizens and cheap labour. For these men, the program did little to improve job skills - and nothing to enhance self-esteem.

There was a marked difference in attitude among those participants who had worked in dune and reserve regeneration projects organised through SkillShare. It is probable that their supervisors were more sensitive to community needs, and perhaps the very nature of the work gave participants a feeling of doing something worthwhile.

There needs to be much more detailed information to programme participants (or the 'client base' in general) of what they can expect from JobSkills and similar schemes so as to forestall disappointment and resentment. They also need to know at the outset exactly what their rights are vis-a-vis the pro-tempore employer.

Employers
It seems evident to this observer that if the programme is to have any lasting positive effect, its administrators must work on the employer side of the equation.

Employers must be properly informed of what they ought to contribute to the scheme, rather than merely stressing to them the benefits they can derive from it. This would require an overhaul of current advertising to this target group - not an easy task given the politically sensitive nature of the issue. Proper information to this group at the local administrator level is perhaps even more crucial.

Programme administrators
Implementation of the JobSkills programme at the local level appears to require better supervision. In this writer's experience, it seems to be too easy for politically ambitious local individuals to attempt hijacking the grants administration process for their own ends.

Audit procedures appear inadequate to cope with sometimes chaotic accounting practices, with varying sets of figures used for the same items depending on which sub-broker is reporting.
The allocation of grant monies to projects is open to questions: this writer was informed that under the programme, some $3700 was allotted to the broker per participant.

Allowing for an unusually high expenditure on this particular participant, the broker would have retained at least between $1500 and $2000 in this instance. In the circumstances, it is hard not to see the programme as a job creation scheme for, say, former teachers. In this case, why not let the CES handle the lot?! (Incidentally, co-ordination between CES and SkillShare/JobSkills appears to be nil.)

Staffing at the local level appears to be, for want of a better word, "erratic". Perhaps this aspect is tied to the above-mentioned local ambitions...

Socio-economic effects
The outcomes for local business are ambivalent: on the one hand, selected employers receive a considerable - and virtually continuous - subsidy to carry out their operations, a subsidy that is obviously not enjoyed by all competitors in the market. The resulting distortion of competition has not been quantified or publicised.

(Indeed, beneficiaries will claim that participation costs them more than they get out of the scheme - this writer believes such claims must be regarded as highly doubtful until properly investigated.)

On the other hand, employers at the same time enjoy an opportunity to trawl through the local labour pool at their leisure - and perhaps they will employ a suitable candidate eventually at market rates.

There may be some actual training occurring (sitting next to Nelly tends to rub off, eventually), and participants may indeed be slightly advantaged in this way. But this effect may be partly negated by the next prospective employer's natural attitude of "if s/he was any good, why didn't XYZ keep them on?"

Political effects
It is the unintended political side-effects of the DEET schemes that are most worrying to this writer. At least in this local area, there appears to arise a new quasi-bureaucracy with entrepreneurial trimmings, and political aspirations to boot.

Hiring and firing administrative staff can be turned into an instrument for building up a local power base, and farming out contracts to cronies or indeed to the ostensibly arms-length consultancy firm of a local scheme administrator must impact on the credibility of the DEET operation.

Another political worry is the possible abuse of a 150-odd million dollar grants programme for electoral advantage, as indicated by the repeated reference to the electorate of brokers, employers and training providers. It should be in Kim Beazley's interest to remove even the appearance of such tie-ins. Otherwise, he might fare worse than Ros Kelly...

Suggestions
It is hard to make off-the-cuff suggestions on how to improve such a complex situation. Some suggested remedies are already embedded in the points made above.

From this writer's position, one alternative could be to provide free advertising to any of the mature-age jobless who try to set themselves up in a service business of their own. While they may have acquired the necessary skills, they most likely lack the means to properly advertise their services, particularly in national media. The government is a large advertiser in these media, and could negotiate a favourable rate with them for such an initiative. Vouchers could then be issued to applicants who would like to try this route - up to the value of what DEET would otherwise spend on a JobSkills participant.

Similarly, vouchers could be given to interested parties to seek training of their choice at the facility of their choice, rather than having to take whatever the local SkillShare broker can (or will) dish up. Guidance and information could be provided by the local CES office.

Indeed, it should be investigated if the entire JobSkills operation could not be more advantageously carried out by the CES.