Orders in Council up to the end of August 2015, show that the cabinet has made on 13 appointments at the rank of deputy minister and assistant deputy minister since the beginning of the new calendar year.
That’s roughly on par with the changes made in 2014.
It’s dramatically short of the record 51 such appointments made in 2013 or the very high rates of turn-over in 2011 and 2012.
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Three deputy minister appointments announced on Tuesday brings the number of senior executive appointments in the public service to 24 in the second half of 2013, according to information from the provincial government’s Order in Council database.
That brings the total number of senior executive appointments in 2013 to 51. Cabinet made 27 such appointments in the first six months of the year. Cabinet made 12 of them in the first quarter.
Since one of the appointments was a temporary job for a senior deputy minister who retired in September, you could reduce the total to 50. But that’s still a record, compared to the previous record 49 senior appointments made in 2012.
In the past decade cabinet has typically made a series of senior appointments in December. That means there is still plenty of time to move the new record significantly higher.
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Related:
Premier Kathy Dunderdale made a few more appointments on Friday to boost her chances of setting a phenomenal record for shifting people around in the senior ranks of the provincial public service.
She made three appointments following hot on the heels of the quickie switcheroo made necessary by Robert Thompson’s apparently unexpected resignation last month.
Cabinet made 12 appointments at the deputy minister and assistant deputy minister rank in the second quarter of the 2013 calendar year (01 April to 30 June).
The information comes from cabinet orders (orders-in-council) needed to make these appointments and released by the provincial government via its website.
That’s consistent with the 15 appointments made between 01 January and 31 March.
If the pattern continues, the provincial government will make a record 60 such appointments by the end of the calendar year, bettering the previous record of 49 set in 2012.
This does not include recent changes in the Premier’s Office or cabinet secretariat.
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You can add another five changes to the record of senior executive appointments cabinet has made since the beginning of the year, according to orders-in-council posted to the provincial government’s website.
That brings the total for Calendar Year 2013 to 20.
Six the 20 are acting appointments, meaning that cabinet will either have to confirm the appointment or put someone new in the job.
Cabinet remains on track to make 60 such appointments in 2013, setting an all-time record for changes in the 121 deputy minister and assistant deputy minister positions in the provincial government.
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One of the great things about having orders in council readily available is that people can find information.
That’s exactly why the current administration has kept them as secret as possible since 2003 and continue to censor them, even though orders in council are entirely public documents.
But at least in the wake of the Bill 29 Freedom From Information measures, the Conservatives seem to have been shamed into opening the vault on their secrets a bit even if they still censor public documents.
One of the things we can now readily see, though, is the number of appointments made by cabinet in the first quarter of 2013 to deputy minister and assistant deputy minister jobs.
A retroactive appointment announcement issued Thursday secured Premier Kathy Dunderdale’s record for the most changes in the senior ranks of the public sector in recent history.
On December 11, Dunderdale announced an appointment that brought her total of appointments to 47. On January 16, though, she announced that Ross Reid had taken up a new job, effective December 16.
That brings her total of actual appointments in 2012 to 48.
SRBP forecast in October 2012 that the Premier was on track to hit a record 49 changes in the provincial public service. She passed the previous record – 39 – in October.
But wait. An announcement on November 01 included two implicit future changes. If we followed the accrual method of accounting for this stuff, then you would add those two to Dunderdale’s total for the year. Bingo: 51 changes in the senior public service that, according to the Telegram, comprises 85 positions.
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Not content to rest on her laurels for changes in senior public sector management, Premier Kathy Dunderdale announced two more changes on Monday.
That brings the total for 2012 to 47, not including the two other changes implicit in the November 01 announcement.
Based on previous announcements, there would typically be at least one more announcement of senior management changes before the end of the year.
Dunderdale is on track to make 49 changes to the senior management in 2012.
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Premier Kathy Dunderdale tied the record on Friday for senior executive changes in the provincial public service.
She appointed an acting deputy minister of justice to replace a fellow who has gone off to his reward as a justice of the supreme court.
Dunderdale set the record last year with 39 changes in a group of senior managers numbering about 85 in total.
If she keeps up the same pace of changes in 2012, Dunderdale will make a total of 49 before the New Year arrives. A quick tally would show that - if she hits that number – Kathy Dunderdale will have made the equivalent of a complete change in the senior ranks of the public service in about two years.
That’s on top of the heavy number of changes to the senior public service over the past decade. Of the line departments, natural resources as seen the heaviest number of changes. There’s been no obvious explanation for the high turn-over any more than there was any explanation of the sudden and mysterious changes at the deputy minister level in the department last month.
The former deputy minister, appointed in 2011 disappeared in September 2012 without explanation or – if you check the release – even a mention of her existence.
She.
Just.
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This will be a record year fort changes in the senior ranks of the provincial public service.
On Friday, Premier Kathy Dunderdale announced change number 38 for 2012. That puts her one off last year’s record total.
And as we told you a couple of weeks ago, she’s on track for 49 changes this year.
Cabinet ministers must be pissed off about this constant disruption in their departments.
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Last summer, the provincial government proudly announced the appointment of a new deputy minister of natural resources.
The release included Diana Dalton’s biography. She’s a lawyer who graduated from Dalhousie in 1979:
… Throughout the course of her career, Ms. Dalton has worked with the Governments of Nova Scotia and Papua New Guinea, as well as with the Department of Economic and Social Development, United Nations, New York. As an independent consultant she has worked in over 30 developed and developing countries in the areas of natural resources, energy and environment, including clients such as the World Bank, United Nations, national governments and private companies. Ms. Dalton has served for the past six years as Chair of the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board, and for two of these years she was also acting CEO.
As impressive as those credentials are, is Dalton still in the same job a year later?
Seems like more churning in the upper ranks of the public service.