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Looking at the statistics for the number of public servants in the UK on can see that their numbers are relatively stable over the past 20 years. However it seems strange to me since huge improvements in technology have occurred since that time, which should have made possible to fire a huge number of government employees who were previous dealing with the inefficiencies of paper-based systems. Even services like the police could be reduced in numbers since you can now monitor an entire city from a single office, rather than relying on ever-present foot patrols.

So why aren't we seeing large scale reductions in government employment over the past 20 years? Why do we still need so many people managing things instead of computers?

Pharap
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JonathanReez
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    Why do you assume that any government agency has an incentive to be efficient? –  Aug 05 '17 at 18:48
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    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law – Orhym Aug 06 '17 at 01:09
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    @user4012: To be fair, there are some things that have become more efficient since the widespread use of computers. In the old days, registering a car used to mean a 20+ mile drive, and at least half a day spent in line at the DMV. Now I can do it in 5 minutes - while in Europe. – jamesqf Aug 06 '17 at 03:49
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    Why would you fire a whole lot of people instead of just using those people to do more useful things? – mrr Aug 06 '17 at 23:14
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    "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy." - Oscar Wilde – EvSunWoodard Aug 07 '17 at 17:29
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    A common misconception is that computers make work easier. In reality the amount of work increases while computers make things possible that would otherwise be absolutely impossible. – sbecker Aug 08 '17 at 08:59
  • @sbecker Exactly. People don't use computers to do the same with fewer people; they use computers to do more. And add to that the fact that a lot of government employees work in "customer" service positions for which there is increasing demand because the number of "customers" keeps growing. – David Richerby Aug 08 '17 at 10:13
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    @MilesRout: if you're the current UK government, you'd do that if you could because you want to cut the deficit. It is not their policy goal to maximise the amount of useful things the government does, it's their policy goal to "balance the books" (i.e. to spend no more than they receive in tax). Their actual success at moving towards this goal has been mixed, of course, because efficiency savings are never as easy as you think they'll be, and cutting services isn't as popular as they hoped it would be. – Steve Jessop Aug 08 '17 at 10:57
  • @SteveJessop But then they probably don't want to be the one putting thousands on the dole, either for political reasons or the for the cost. – TripeHound Aug 08 '17 at 17:01
  • @TripeHound: well, it's not as if computers arrive in every government department on the same day and make everyone redundant all at once, so "firing a lot of people" isn't the literal reality. The question covers 20 years, and generally governments or departments who are making cuts can reduce numbers over time by not replacing those who leave or retire, rather than by dramatically sacking everyone. They might still sack some. – Steve Jessop Aug 08 '17 at 17:06
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    This is an example of the Luddite fallacy. History has shown that instead of technology reducing jobs, it merely changes the job composition in an economy. Lawyers thought that computers would make the job of legal interns, largely paperwork/administration-based, obsolete; instead, they found that work that would have previously been impossible to attempt, e.g. a much larger number of cases, was now actually possible. They found the interns different jobs to do. – Sam Aug 17 '17 at 13:42

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UK Civil Service staff numbers are as follows:

UK Civil Service staff numbers

As you can see, there were around 750k civil servants around when Thatcher took office and computers started to become mainstream. It has been falling down to ~400k since. The UK's population grew about 10% over the same time period.

Put another way, there actually has been large scale reductions in government employment and productivity increases since computers have started to become mainstream.

Denis de Bernardy
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    Also we can assume mainframe systems were in use in some government depts for far longer, therefore we'd expect less of a step-change with the introduction of PC's and the Internet. – peterG Aug 05 '17 at 13:08
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    The reduction is only a correlation however. Too many factors are involved to pin it just on computers. – curiousdannii Aug 05 '17 at 15:42
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    Confounding factor: privatisation. Huge numbers of staff were transferred to private companies doing effectively the same job on worse contracts with a percentage profit to shareholders taken off the top. – pjc50 Aug 05 '17 at 16:10
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    I'm not knowledgeable in the U.K. Could any of this be related to the end of the World War period? Many of those positions may have been unnecessary as the war effort cooled down. – indigochild Aug 05 '17 at 23:01
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    @indigochild You are aware of which year Thatcher took office, right? – MJeffryes Aug 05 '17 at 23:53
  • @MJefftyes No idea, but the plot shows a relatively steady decrease since the end of the 1940s. So the key is likely what changed at that time. – indigochild Aug 05 '17 at 23:59
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    @indigochild 1979, about the start of the blue region, and you can see a mini-bump in the years leading to her term (~1960-1975 it's mostly increasing). – muru Aug 07 '17 at 05:31
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    @muru I agree with indi here; the salient point of the graph is the huge difference in staff numbers before and after WWII, from which they are still descending. – Taemyr Aug 07 '17 at 08:09
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    There a couple of things that are likely to be relevant when accounting for the numbers pre and post WWII. Firstly Britain remained on a war footing for a number of years after WWII: rationing didn't end until after 1954, so many of the roles that were created in WWII were still needed. Not to mention that the economy was in a very shaky state so dumping nearly a million people on the labour market would likely have had a catastrophic effect. – tallus Aug 07 '17 at 23:46
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  • The post war period saw the creation of the welfare state, which is responsible for the majority of civil servants, as well the NHS, the Education act and the nationalisation of key industries.
  • – tallus Aug 07 '17 at 23:53
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    @muru 1979 is exactly the beginning of the blue region: from that point, the regions are coloured according to the governing party: blue for the Conservatives, "red" for the Labour Party and blue and yellow for the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition – David Richerby Aug 09 '17 at 10:39
  • Why civil staff had a 12-time increase during WWII? I'd expect increase of the military staff instead. – Alex Klaus Aug 13 '17 at 06:25