Troubled days lead to creative solutions and the current Coronavirus pandemic has put the squeeze on Public Services the nation over and they haven’t failed to respond with excellence.
Delivering a veritable assemblage of able, adept, apt, astute, adroit and alert answers to amputate the crisis, Public Services across the nation are genuflecting before the Commonwealth as it swooped without delay to set up the most predictable of PS policies – the appointment of a committee.
The Feds were quick off the blocks to establish a ‘National COVID-19 Coordination Commission’ to draw together the swags of information and advice pouring into Australia from around the world so that the experts attempting to manage the public’s response to the pandemic have the best advice at their fingertips.
A wise move and one to be supported but it does raise a quarrelsome question for pompous pedants like PS-sssst! pressing for perfection.
How, one asks, does the Commission cater for the number ‘19’ in its official abbreviation of ‘National COVID-19 Coordination Commission’?
The answer: It doesn’t.
Far from the perfect resolution ‘NC19CC’ – or even NCNCC – the Commission has adopted the simple NCCC as its abstraction of choice, leaving the orphan numeral to seek recognition alone and elsewhere.
Could it be the extreme devilry being shown by COVID-19 is the number’s way of getting even?
A PIE too many?
To NSW now where an old nominal friend from a past Federal Public Service has reared his/her amusing head to bow cheekily again in the anagrammatic controversy of the ‘unintended alias’.
The NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment has formally declared its official abbreviation as ‘DPIE’, presumably pronounced Dee-PIE, just a modest coo-eee away from its earlier and very similar national counterpart, the Department of Primary Industry and Energy.
The Federal Department came to be known affectionately as ‘DoPIE’.
While both Departments do, or did, wonderful things for their communities, the main difference seems to be that one had a livelier sense of humour than the other.
But then again, PIEs can be funny too!
Giveaway going
To Rama Gaind’s worthy and weekly windfall of well-written books and wisely watched DVDs now with this week’s lucky winners taking home the life-changing life guide Matchfit by Andrew May and Tom Buckley.
To fit a free copy of Matchfit, two lucky winners needed only correctly identify how many years of experience Andrew May has had as an elite athlete and fitness trainer for some of the world’s best athletes.
The answer was 20 years and the first correct contesters to emerge from the PS News unfamous Barrel of Booty were Jessica H from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and Barb B from the Australian Taxation Office.
Congratulations to Jessica and Barb and thanks to everyone who tried their hands at Rama’s rompous round of freebie seeking for this week.
The winners’ prizes will be on their way shortly.
As always the Rama-go-Round continues with two active giveaways under way this week, the DVD Arctic Justice at this link and the book The Languages of Leadership at this link.
Out of time?
And on the question of taking work home, PS-sssst! wonders how many officers of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation wished they didn’t?
Perhaps they can launch a belated plea to the judge that it was OK after all because it was only their timing that was out!
Welcome visitors
And Finally, fantastic response to the flash new Home Page that PS News now calls Home with a tickle under 10,000 readers (9,791 to be exact) taking the time in the past week to take a look at the new starting point for news-surfing the Public Service.
The new page received the PS-sssst! treatment last week, leaving this week the job of pointing the fickle finger of gratitude at the genii pair Ed and Lisa with occasional interference by ‘yours (long-past-his-use-by-date) truly’, thee combined brain lobes and synapses of whom teamed up to create the one single page that now links everything of interest in every Public Service everywhere in Australia.
The new one-stop hop for PS news galore can be accessed at psnews.com.au with the added attraction that once you’re in your favourite PS News edition, you can stay there for good or return to the full Network Home Page just by clicking the “Network News” button.
PS News may be breaking new ground but it remains your independent online newspaper, just click and see.
‘Till next week……
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