Il 23 febbraio è stato pubblicato il libro The Big Con How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies, scritto dall’economista Mariana Mazzucato insieme a Rosie Collington.

In un articolo su Project Syndicate le autrici forniscono una panoramica sui contenuti del libro.

Sometimes, governments hire consultants to fill gaps in their own capacity. Unfortunately, awarding consultancies with wide-ranging, lucrative contracts has simply become the default approach, even for areas that should obviously fall under the government’s remit. Thus, in 2020, one British Conservative peer complained that civil servants are routinely deprived “of opportunities to work on some of the most challenging, fulfilling, and crunchy issues,” and that the “unacceptable” reliance on private consultants was infantilizing the civil service.

When everything is outsourced, government agencies cannot develop the internal skills and knowledge needed to manage new challenges. This should concern all of us. Epidemiologists warn that the next global pandemic is a matter of “when,” not “if.” We urgently need to invest in governments’ and public-health agencies’ ability to detect new outbreaks and contain them before they can spread.