Private to Public sector: Salary

I didn't say they were making decisions, I said they were tasked with doing work on projects they don't have the necessary experience to accomplish properly. I'll give an example based on one I've recently had with a UK public sector client I work with (the PS in the UK has almost identical issues btw so it's not an "only in Ireland roll your eyes" thing) but will keep it as general as possible for privacy's sake.

Technical IT skills are rare in most PS organisations due to the high value the market places on those skills. Hiring managers often salivate over the new graduate who has recently qualified with SQL, R and Python as part of their curriculum and once hired, send them to the IT Department to be the new "reporting specialist" for a particular project (since, on paper the hiring manager deduced that have the requisite technical skills). In this case, the graduate was assigned to a major re-implementation of a particular management information system that involved assisting with porting data from the legacy system and replacing the reporting infrastructure for that system

The reality is that a college level education (even at post graduate or masters level) in such programming languages is actually quite rudimentary and steeped in academic ideals of "Third Normal Form" and the like. An experienced data analyst will have learned how to deal with real world issues where data is often poorly stored in (often multiple, silo'd) systems, usually in need of cleansing, refactoring etc. The experienced analyst would have knowledge of the reporting domain (we'll say this was a HR system for the sake of illustration), is likely to have experienced either the system being implemented and a detailed knowledge of it's database structure or at least a similar application and hence understands the nuances of the data contained in such systems (e.g. the dimensions of data to be reported on, the measures to be reported, any implications of date sensitivity or timeliness etc.). The grad didn't know the first thing about HR data. They failed to understand that almost every dimension of an employee's contract will be date sensitive. They didn't have the business language of HR to enable them to effectively communicate with the managers whose reporting needs they were tasked with meeting. So, they did their best, leaned on the experienced (external) consultants they had access to where they could and produced a suite of single-purpose reports for the new system. Most of these reports weren't what the managers had asked for, half of them had wrong information and I, as the experienced consultant, ended up being brought in to do a month of work to develop a reporting framework they could produce reports for the business users from. A reporting framework designed not for an IT user but one the business users themselves could be trained to use in 2 or 3 days. And that's what happened: the business users ended up self sufficient in basic reporting, they still bring me in for a few days every year or so to extend / enhance the framework or to do a particularly complex bit of analysis and the graduate skipped off into the private sector with claims of having had an "extensive role in the development of a new HR reporting framework" for the organisation on their LinkedIn profile. In reality their only real contribution to the project was to waste time and any learnings or experience they gained from the experience left the organisation.

On this, we're in a lot of agreement. It's not just the unions, it's the entire public sector hiring and HR framework.

You're right that there's no point comparing a clerical role with a highly technical role. The sad reality is that there's very little differentiation between such roles in a lot of the PS though: staff in the IT department are likely to be on virtually identical grade scales as those in Finance, HR, Housing, Planning, etc. There's very little to distinguish in how skillsets and experience are treated: a candidate with a BA in Political Science and Irish and a Masters in Conflict Resolution is falsely equivalated as having skills as valuable as a CIMA certified Accountant or likely higher than someone with a graduate diploma in software development. Whatever cultural value one may place on the first candidate's education, the reality is that such skills aren't as in demand or highly marketable whereas the financial or technical skills are with the end result that you often end up with a wildly "over-qualified" person being paid over market rate to do an administrative function that doesn't require a third level qualification at all while the same organisation is incapable of hiring or retaining staff with more in demand skillsets.

What lifer mentality?. Lots of people join and leave public sector. Nothing stopping anyone. There's a public Jobs website full of jobs.

If you don't value security why is any of this even an issue for you? Just stay in the private sector. Just follow the highest salary...

No, I've been both the graduate thrown in at the deep end by a private consultancy firm and, in more recent years, the senior on such projects trying to shepherd the poor wide eyed graduates through them ;)

The role I play these days is that which the public sector tends to lack: they can't retain the graduates beyond a couple of years so there's a huge shortage of experienced staff for the grads to learn from and/or be mentored by.

The young graduate that survives the project working for the big consultancy firm goes on to the next project as a less green, more useful resource and likely gets a small bump in salary on their annual performance based on the experience they've gained on the first project. The organisational learning is kept in house for at least a few years and what's lost through attrition is gained by hiring staff who got similar experience working in one of the other big firms (or by being the public sector resource on the same project as them)

The public sector lacks the capability to do this: they can't come close enough to the salary levels the market pays to attract the experienced technical staff. It doesn't have to be parity, the public sector has other advantages. Many in the private sector would be happy to take a bit of a hit in their take-home pay to avail of those advantages. And let's face it, due to our tax system, at the salary levels experienced IT staff salary command a drop of 10 or 15k wouldn't make all that much difference to one's lifestyle (e.g. going from 95k to 80k isn't going to mean you can't afford your mortgage or not take the kids on a summer holiday any more). A differential of over 30k though? That makes it a very hard option to look at.

Not really similar issues all over. Its global economy.

Step back and think about it.

How likely you think it is that public sector IT depts are solely filled with graduates, people with no private sector experience, no experience or exposure to outsourcing, contractors or other resources. No previous projects. If they can't retain beyond a couple of years, the average age in public sector must be about 24~26.

Considering the age profile of those in this thread who are looking at public sector jobs. They aren't graduates.

I think we likely agree on more than we disagree, a good project manager is as valuable as a Stradivarius but sadly almost as rare...

In my experience, public sector IT projects tend to be mainly about vendor management since most projects are almost entirely dependent on external resources to carry out the actual work due to a lack of internal technical skills.

Software houses that cater for the public sector market have been my bread and butter for 20 years or so. ;)

Some, for example Social Housing Management systems are totally focused on the PS / NFP market while others, e.g. Finance, HR, Asset Management or ERP vendors will have a mix of clients in public and private sectors, often delivered and supported via resellers / consultancy services who specialise in particular markets. Bespoke development is only really used for the most niche requirements these days and often as an "add on" to a major product e.g. an add-on module for SAP or a particular API to support a third-party or legacy system of some sort.

The key difference I've experienced in implementation/upgrades of systems where you have both private and public sector clients is that the public sector clients require far more consultancy time in order to deploy due to a lack of technical resources on their side (or skimp on it and fail to achieve many of the benefits they purchased the system for in the first place).

Well it is. It based on collective bargaining. If you want individual accommodations' that the private sector. THere are exceptions in the public sector, but most people won't fall into that.

No idea what the relevance of funding is to this discussion.