City auditor to look at size of Edmonton bureaucracy and middle management

The City of Edmonton auditor has confirmed he has included a review of the bureaucracy in his work plan for the coming year.

That includes the size and make-up of not only the 13,000 employees across the corporation, but also the number of middle managers involved.

“There is a perception that the city has grown in terms of middle management,” auditor David Wiun told city council’s audit committee on Friday.

“So it’s obviously something that we’d look without making any pre-determined conclusions. We’d want to get the information and try to do the analysis and get the evidence and provide that.”

Questions about the size of middle management came up in a series of round tables hosted by Councillor Mike Nickel on October 10.

“As far as the scope of managers they have now, there’s just too too many of them,” Mark Tetterington, president of ATU Local 569, said at the time.

It’s been several years since staffing levels have been looked at. Wiun told the meeting the ratio to staff levels will be one part of the review.

“Trying to look what may be the impact in productivity, including management to FTE levels, technology, changes to scope, obviously labour is a key input of productivity so we’ll be looking at some of the details around that.”

Mayor Don Iveson, in going over the work plan with Wiun, said he’s happy the middle management question will be part of the over all review.

“So we don’t need a separate analysis of that specifically, you’re going to look at it in the context of productivity management and oversight accountability ratios?” Iveson asked during the audit committee meeting.

“Yes, span of control,” Wiun replied.

“Fantastic!” Iveson said. “Christmas is arriving early from an audit and accountability point of view for me.”

No return date for the audit was identified at the meeting.