Bangkok Post Arnat Leemakdej Column.

Byline: Arnat Leemakdej

Oct. 5--The government's policy is to promote the hiring of local consultants for government jobs. The Fiscal Policy Office plays the leading role, with consultants registering at the Office to gain recognition when bidding for projects.

The role of the Office is to evaluate and classify consultants according to their skills, styles, successful track records in Thailand and abroad, and fee structure.

Sometimes the government does not know how to use consultants and thus misuses them. Eventually, consultants get all the blame.

Some consultants provide service only on the strategic side without implementation work. They include McKinsey, BCG and the Gartner Group. Some others wear the hats of both strategy and implementation (for example, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Andersen, Accenture, Deloitte Touche, KPMG, EDS and A.T. Kearney).

The rules of the game are to hire one for strategy and another for implementation. Do not put one firm into two roles or provide too much freedom to play around with the budget.

This is because some consulting firms tend to "overbuild" projects and extend the scope of work beyond what is necessary in the hope of securing a long assignment without caring about the objective, effectiveness and value for money to the clients.