The Isle of Man government has changed, once a small reactive administration we led the way in searching out new revenue streams, finding the next big industry and creating the environment in which those companies could flourish and expand creating well paid jobs for our people, spending on infrastructure on the Island and supporting our third sector and community events with generous swathes of their profits.

 

But now we have changed, and it’s not for the better, we have stopped being that once fast moving, reactive, small administration, legislating to allow for growth and for what our businesses needed.

We no longer are creating new areas of progression, and we have all but lost large parts of many industries that have supported our economy and GDP figures over the last 25 years.

 

There’s no point dwelling on that now, because it’s too late, the lost are gone and we have to move forward, but we have to progress by relearning why we were so successful in the past.

 

When you take the time to speak to the leaders of industry on the Island, particularly those in the tech sectors we court so highly, the one word that comes to the fore most often is FRICTION.  It has become too difficult to do business on the Island, there is too much regulation and not enough speed of movement within government to allow it to be overcome.

 

And that’s why a refocusing of our government is now the most important part of our plan for the next 5 years.

 

No one will grow our economy without this, our core industries are all struggling, and they may not be producing the largest slices of the “GDP” pie, but they sure as hell will be the ones that we have left if we don’t fix our issues quickly.

We are often told we have experts out there looking for the next big thing for us, our government is going to pull the rabbit from the hat with the new Tech sector that will have us all back in rewarding, well paid, wealth generating employment, here’s the stinger, unfortunately it’s very unlikely we are going to find it in the current climate.

 

Depressing, I know, and I am sorry, but we have to accept the picture before we move forward with what we have to do to fix our economy.

 

Government on the Island is slowing us down, its pulling us back and draining our fight, we have to adjust that immediately.

 

We have to also start living by our means, we can no longer draw from our reserves to bolster this declining private economy, and fudge figures to suggest we are doing well by spending public money.

 

We must have a real refocus on how our money is spent within the system, we have paid more and more recently for our public sector while suffering from a deterioration of front line services across the board.  We must make sure we are getting the best core requirements we need, and stop focusing on the “nice to have” systems we squander so much money on.

 

The first step of this is to centralise all government administration and data, it is ridiculous in this day and age that we can’t have a single, well protected data point that holds absolutely all over each of our records in one place.

Imagine a health system where people receive drugs dangerous to their wellbeing because the data held in separate parts of that system means their G.P. records can’t be seen by the emergency doctor treating them in a crisis, how can that be right?

 

Modern technology allows for all of our personal data to be secured safely, so everything we need held on record from our vehicle tax and passport application to our medical files can be held and administered centrally.  Access controlled by requirement and any attempted breach of access to other areas refused, logged and reported.  A single secure, well monitored and administrated data system will save us millions of man hours a year and reduce non-frontline positions across government dramatically.

 

The costs saving in these areas is considerable, as every department would seriously reduce the need for administration time.  The people in the departments could really focus on the issues, rather than bureaucracy, and we could get the drive back to making sure our services are being provided, and that we have teams looking after our industries and small proactive teams working with potential new business routes to make sure we offer them the path of least resistance to coming to the Island.

 

There must also be the building of the relationship between our people, our businesses and our government, too often we all see the arguments between our sectors and the administration.

 

E-gaming, Hospitality, Agriculture, Construction and Tourism have all had their battles with government recently, and that’s a problem, these are our employers, our home builders and our wealth creators.  We must totally rebuild the working relationship with all our sectors, it is the government’s job to make legislation that allows business to flourish, while looking after our people and creating more employment. 

Not to create the jobs themselves, nor to add extra layers of regulation and bureaucracy.

It is not government's role to be an innovating entrepreneur and led a thriving economy, great governments make the space for the private sector to produce results.

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In our public sector departments; Health, Education, Transport, Emergency Services and Infrastructure again we must use technology to reduce admin and allow us to focus spending on the front line services we all want.

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In summary, our government has become bogged down in administration and bureaucracy, we must make it an absolutle priority to adjust this and reduce costs while producing far better front line returns for our people.