Inside the Blob

Tales from within the Wokington Civil Service

From time to time throughout my career I’ve worked with the New Zealand civil service, enough to reach the conclusion that 99% of the personnel could be sacked and whole ministries could be disestablished without any detriment to service levels.

I want to share some anecdotes of how I came to this conclusion.

The first thing to know is Wokington civil servants generally don’t do anything; they are merely in-house observers of their organisation’s activities. Throughout my career I can count the number I’ve encountered who are (a) good at their job and (b) perform a worthwhile function on one hand. The actual functions of the ministries are almost entirely outsourced and the civil servants are merely observers. Typically it works like this:

1. A consultancy (KPMG, Deloitte, etc.) convinces the Ministry executive of an initiative.

2. The executive engages their department subordinates to progress the initiative.

3. The subordinates determine if the initiative is provided under the SLA they have with their outsourced service provider.

4. If the initiative is covered under SLA they progress with the outsourced service provider.

5. If it isn’t the ministry goes to market with an RFP or RFI written for them by the outsourced service provider.

6. Private sector consultancies (including the outsourced service provider) bid for the initiative.

7. The subordinates engage an independent third party to select three proposals from those submitted by the private sector.

8. The subordinates escalate the selected proposals to someone in the ministry hierarchy with a large enough DFA to approve it, typically the executive.

9. The ministry chooses the cheapest option.

10. The consultancy delivers the initiative.

11. At the conclusion of delivery the consultancy hands over the initiative for maintenance by the outsourced service provider.

The civil servants don’t participate in any of the actual work involved in this process. Their entire role is restricted to shuffling paper between one another and, at a high enough level, allocating taxpayer funds to the private sector to perform the ministry’s function on its behalf.

So how do Wokington civil servants actually spend their time and fill their days? Here are some of my observations.

Let’s start with the meetings. In my field client meetings are typically scheduled for half an hour and comprise me, a decision-maker (typically C-level), my counterpart, a representative of the affected business units and (perhaps) a subject matter expert, a programme director or maybe a business analyst. If we can’t conclude our business within that timeframe we need a workshop instead of a meeting which is scheduled for 2, 4 or 8 hours.

The civil service doesn’t work like this. Clustered around The Terrace in central Wokington the ministries host meetings for an hour at a minimum comprising a huge cast of participants, most of whom are tangential at best to the subject at hand. There will be Communications personnel, Human Resources. Sometimes even a shop steward.

It’s like joining a cult. The meetings commence with a karakia which is a sort of pagan prayer traditionally practised by Maori people but mandated across the modern New Zealand civil service. Typically it is conducted by the most senior person in the room and they are trained to perform it, in a formal class setting, to ensure they observe the proper protocol and intone the correct pronunciation. At the conclusion of the karakia the civil service invites all of the participants to introduce themselves and it is a sight to behold. The New Zealand equivalent of a struggle session, all of the civil servants take it in turns to introduce themselves and describe their role, mostly in the Maori language. They also detail their genealogy and announce what they have done personally that week to do things like “give effect to the Treaty of Waitangi” and describe their “personal commitment to equity for trans folx” and “lowering my carbon footprint.” Publicly demonstrate, in other words, their strict adherence and undying commitment to Wokington orthodoxies.

This process takes ten to fifteen minutes but it isn’t as performative as it sounds, the civil servants are almost invariably true believers. When the actual meeting commences there is seldom an agenda and on the rare occasions there is the civil servants don’t stick to it. Instead they take turns pushing their personal wheelbarrows and at the conclusion there are no action points recorded because none have been decided. To civil servants the purpose of the meeting wasn’t to coordinate future activities, the purpose of the meeting was the meeting itself.

The second things that strikes one is the mechanical behaviour of civil servants, they’re like automatons. The first time I saw this I thought it was a silent fire drill, at 10.30 am on the dot all of the civil servants stand up with the precision of synchronised swimmers and file out of the room. They head to the canteen for their union-mandated fifteen minute break and literally nothing will prevent them. The ministry could be in crisis with alarms blaring and still, they take that break.

They do the same at 3 pm and leave the premises on the dot at 5 pm. They start at 8.30 am and take an hour for lunch at 12 pm. Nothing disrupts this schedule.

The third thing that strikes one is the uniform. On client sites I’m always wearing a suit, as a consultant it’s expected. Typically my counterparts are dressed more casually, trousers and dress shirts. The civil service is very different, I’d describe it as ‘homespun.’

I’m not sure if it’s a civil service thing or more generally a Wokington thing but they wear their work clothes day after day. A typical male member of the civil service will wear jeans and moccasins with a jersey that looks like it was knitted by his nana over top of a t-shirt. If they’re a little more formal they’ll wear corduroy, jackets with leather elbow pads. But here’s the thing: they’ll be wearing the same outfit the next day.

I’m not making this up. They seem to have adopted the concept of “work clothes” which is the same set of items they always wear when they go to work, similar to how a mechanic thinks about overalls. Seldom does any of the apparel see the inside of a washing machine. The females are dressed much the same with the addition of disconcerting amounts of polyester, and hair dyed in an unnatural colour. Often more than one.

Across both sexes the unifying emblem is the lanyard. This is the loop of cloth some officer workers use to attach their access cards. For the Wokington civil service this must be worn around the neck and comes in two approved patterns - either the rainbow colours of the alphabet people or the red and black of the Maori separatists. The civil servants compete amongst themselves to display their dedication to these causes by increasing the width of the material. A normal lanyard is a cord about the width of a shoelace, some might be flat with a width of a centimetre. In Wokington the average lanyard is at least an inch wide so that the cause it symbolises can be more prominently displayed.

Another aspect which is unique to Wokington is the keys. They attach these to the lanyards as well which causes them to make an audible jingle when the civil servants move. This is the office equivalent of Swiss cow bells but Wokington civil servants sacrifice the annoyance to demonstrate their personal commitment to the herd. As a visitor it is weird to be amongst them, you can literally hear them coming up behind you. I take this as a cue to draw a deep breath before the odour hits.

Finally there’s the indolence. A typical Wokington civil servant achieves nothing of value on any given day, in fact on any day. Their worklife consists of seven hours praying and reciting their genealogy in pointless meetings, interspersed with brief periods at their desks circulating emails that aren’t relevant about subjects that don’t matter to people who aren’t interested.

But here’s the most damning aspect. There are no accomplishments. Their job security isn’t based on performance, there are no KPIs and definitely no targets. Wokington civil servants are judged instead by the fervour they demonstrate when proclaiming their devotion to the left wing orthodoxies of race, climate and gender.

A meeting invite is their call to prayer and they pray to these Gods at least five time a day.

-SRA. Auckland, 12/x 2025.