Is it by chance that the knowledgeable and experienced forum members, who were used to be active a long way within this topic, are silent now? What kind of people are they? An intrigued or concerned reader could re-read the thread, paying attention to the Karmalite’s questions, which were left unanswered... For a clue…
Welcome to share your thoughts here.
It looks, that the first stage of our analysis is over. Let’s summarize the interim results and look for the next steps.
Karmalite wrote:rinso wrote:
Vote for the right people.
Once in 4 years time taxpayers vote for a political direction and elect a board of selectmen responsible for the legislative function. The legislative body hires on the taxpayers' money an executive body to oversee the administrative operations, implement its policies, and advise it.
The quality of the decisions of the hired employees of an executive body (like the decisions of hired employees anywhere) can be affected by numerous factors: qualifications, personal conditions, hidden agendas, etc.
In order to make a thoughtful choice at the next elections, a taxpayer should know for sure that:
1. The decisions were prepared by an executive body accurately. For example, they can be based on inadequately interpreted statistical data, and thus mislead the legislative board and the public opinion.
2. The current board of selectmen is satisfied with the decision.
If taxpayers are not able to check these two issues they are not able to make an informed choice.
Let's consider the IEEC case from this perspective.
1. How can taxpayers check out the accuracy of the decisions prepared by a government?
The parents highly value the IEEC: it has a long-term great reputation, it is difficult to get a place there; the IEEC pre-school graduates have been using to have the highest rate of entering the English language schools among other English language pre-schools for many years; parents know that their kids just love to go to the IEEC. At the same time, the municipality rejected it in the bid with the decision TRE:6370/02.07.01/2016 and the grounds for the decision are not transparent. The parents wanted to verify the accuracy of the decision and challenged it with the questions:
A. What analysis has been done to compare the IEEC performance vs other pre-schools in this competition? What was the list of the used criteria?
B. How did the used criteria make possible that the IEEC is qualified as an acceptable supplier to provide daycare services and as a non-acceptable one for the pre-school services?
C. The inspection in IEEC took place on December 13th? The decision was received on December 15th. Was this timing according to a plan? Was this timing legitimate?
So far, the parents have not received a response. Will they receive an answer? When?
2. How can taxpayers find out that the board of selectmen is satisfied with the prepared decisions?
The following message is sent via the Tampere Facebook page:
beginning of the quotation
“On epämukava, että kaupungin yhteydenpito kanavat ovat joskus epäluotettavia ja jopa nyt kunnallisvaalien aikana, lautakuntien kokoonpanojen sivut ovat alhaalla teknisen vian vuoksi. Näyttää siltä, että Facebook on kaikkein varmin ja luotettava kanava. Tästä syystä, olkaa hyvä, kaupungin Facebook-tiimi, ja lähettäkää eteenpäin päätösvalmistelusihteerille Aino Jokiselle (ja vaikka suoran valtakunnalle) linkin
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=94607 (Foorumi “Do we serve Finnish bureaucrats or do they serve us?” koskee Englanninkielisen esiopetuksen hankinta TRE:6370/02.07.01/2016) ja kysymyksen “Ovatko Tampereen lautakunnan jäsenet tyytyväisiä päätökseen TRE:6370/02.07.01/2016 IEECistä ja onko se poliittinen päätös? (Saa laittaa mielipiteet ja kommentit Foorumiin Suomeksi tai Englanniksi)".
end of the quotation
Unofficial translation:
It is inconvenient, that the city's communicational channels are sometimes unreliable, and even now, before the elections, those pages are unavailable because of a technical problem. It looks like the Facebook is the most reliable mean of communications. From this perspective, could the Facebook team, please, forward to the secretary Aino Jokinen (or may be directly to the selectmen) the link
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=94607 (Forum “Do we serve Finnish bureaucrats or do they serve us?” regarding the decision on the English language pre-schools TRE:6370/02.07.01/2016) and the questions "Are the Tampere selectmen satisfied with the decision TRE:6370/02.07.01/2016 on the IEEC and Was it a political decision? (It is possible to post opinions and comments to the Forum in Finnish or in English).
What are the next steps?
And, just in case… Nobody is perfect… If a kind of a technical problem infects this forum, the “Do we serve Finnish bureaucrats or do they serve us?” script can be always found on a request at
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K0E ... 0h29g/edit (with Amazon 99.99% availability/99.99% durability and reasonable frequency of updates).