Six and Eleven Thousands

One of our cafe regulars, Patris, once told me that in an FGD on public services reform she organized, those so-called experts refused to elaborate her question on the ratio of public officer to the economy (like GDP, or population, or size), in comparison to other countries --or so, I was told.

They deemed the ratio, those numbers, as irrelevant, because it all depends on, well.., something else. Of course, numbers might not give you complete answers, the wrong numbers can be disastrous too. But it does have some useful information.

Consider this:
a. The Ministry of Finance has surplus of incompetent officers but at the same time lacks of badly needed officers, such as tax inspectors.
b. The Ministry of Finance has surplus of six thousands incompetent officers but at the same time lacks of eleven thousands more badly-needed officers, such as tax inspectors.

Which one is more useful information? Alas, even the so called experts are too lazy reluctant to come up with figures, and often goes with type a explanation.

The first step to public reform, of course, to know how many people we need to hire --and scrap out--, given the needs in hand.