When we judge the performance of chief executives, most of us know the boss who's good at cutting costs isn't worth as much as the boss who's also able to improve the outfit's products and processes. Well, the same goes for treasurers and finance ministers - and their econocrats.
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It seems the fiscal managers are running low on good ideas. But not to worry - the former Treasury and prime ministerial adviser Dr Ric Simes, now of Deloitte Access Economics, had some useful advice to offer in a speech to the Australian Business Economists last week.
Simes argues governments themselves have an important role to play in achieving the improved productivity performance the econocrats keep saying we need. Especially when "productivity" is better thought of as "technological progress" and that the figures for measured productivity aren't as important as actual improvements in welfare.
"For those parts of the economy where market forces are paramount, government's main role is to make sure that regulation or its own actions allow competition to unfold without unwarranted intervention," Simes says.
To me, this means econocrats should urge their masters to tread carefully when powerful business interests, fighting to shore up a technologically superseded business model, demand that governments make breaches of government-granted copyright a hanging offence.
As Simes says, digital technologies have lower entry barriers and are forcing businesses to be both more productive and more responsive to consumers. So don't help incumbents resist change.
But, he says, the potential for technology to make some of the largest improvements in Australian lives lies in government-heavy sectors including health, education and transport. In these areas, progress has been too gradual.
"The exemplar is probably electronic health records, which have been the focus of considerable effort for perhaps 15 years now, but where we still seem to be a long way off the goal of having them routinely used throughout the health system.
"Or, take even an example where we have done well, the SCATS - Sydney Co-ordinated Adaptive Traffic System - for control of traffic lights. SCATS was originally developed 40 years ago, it has been constantly refined since then and is now in use in 27 countries.
"So, a success story - yet, as a Sydney driver, I know my welfare would be improved with a more refined SCATS system. It's coming - NICTA [the National Information Communications Technology Research Centre of Excellence] and others are working on optical-based monitoring and improved optimisation algorithms - but more support for both the research and especially its deployment would lift my welfare!"
Simes notes that in both cases, electronic health records and SCATS, the strict efficiency improvements from the technology - the bit that would help government budgets - represent a relatively small part of the overall benefits to the community.
"Especially in health and education, many of the benefits will involve improvements in the quality and range of services rather than efficiency gains," he says.
"Making the most effective use of digital technologies in health and education - as well as other areas where government has a direct role, such as smart technologies in transport and utilities - will deliver much larger economic and social benefits than where we seem to like to focus much of our policy attention, such as whether we should get the budget back into balance by 2017 or 2019."
Another potentially major area of micro-economic reform, Simes says, is how we organise our cities. Up to 80 per cent of Australia's output and employment occurs within its major cities. This has happened in the pursuit of economies of agglomeration.
"Yet we know that the problems are mounting. Congestion, compromised open spaces, the loss of amenity all risk detracting more and more from those benefits."
As with digital, many of the benefits from fixing these problems would not show up in our standard measures of welfare derived from the national accounts.
"Ten minutes less travelling time to work, or to school, doesn't have direct effects on gross domestic product. A more vibrant space around the harbour, or convenient shopping centre in the 'burbs, doesn't get picked up. But social welfare is clearly affected," he says.
Taking Sydney as an example, if commuter travel times on its roads were reduced by five minutes per trip, the benefits would amount to $3.6 billion a year, if an individual's time is valued at average weekly earnings.
To this you could add savings for freight or commercial vehicles. And savings for going to the shops, or school, or to the beach.
Echoing the patron saint of treasurers, Simes wants to lift our gaze to "the big picture".
Ross Gittins is the economics editor.
