A huge public institution needs an experienced, inactive social activist

The puzzling intention of the Minister of Welfare, Meir Cohen, to appoint Yuval Albashan - a social activist and academic with no managerial experience - to the position of Director General of the National Insurance Institute

Nir Kipnis

02/05/2022

Monday, 02 May 2022, 09:59 Updated: 10:24

• Share on Facebook

• Share on WhatsApp

• Share on Twitter

• Share on Email

• Share on general

• Comments

  Comments

With your permission we will go straight to the bottom line: this is the most wrongful appointment the current government has sought to promote.

Not for the sake of purity, but for the simple reason that any appointment of a person without a proven administrative chapter in his professional career, to manage one of the largest and most complex mechanisms in the State of Israel, is invalid.

Just imagine what would have happened if the Minister of Defense had decided to appoint someone whose entire security experience is to be a military reporter, does that make sense to anyone

? , But first a little about the gap between ideology and management.

Good to know (promoted)

This button can save your life in case of a medical emergency

Served on behalf of Shahal

Yuval Albashan: Advocate, social activist, academic and even a writer - impressive, but not enough to head the National Insurance Institute (Photo: Yachz)

Geugei Larik

It was Ariel Sharon who coined at the time the sentence that should be written at the entrance to the government: "Things to see from here", if you want to continue the image until Dante, you can also put it as "You who are at the gates - despair of any ideological hope, enough to wear Che shirts Guevara shifts to the May Day demonstrations or to Gate 5 in the Derby, it's time to become directors ”(to be fair, it is doubtful the author of the Divine Comedy would have signed the last sentences).

I want to say: the State of Israel has a lot of idealists, but very few managers.

Did we mention Sharon?

It is not for nothing that he sometimes longs for those who were his opponents.

Whatever you say, the person knew how to mark a goal and achieve it: as a commander in the IDF, as a minister of housing and as prime minister.

Even someone who does not miss his ideology (and there are those on both the left and the right) misses his execution abilities, when he still had his strength in his hips.

Why?

I refer you again to the sifa of the previous paragraph, to say: We have a lot of idealists, but very few talented professional managers.

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid.

He had probably already forgotten the days when he treated the government as a management company, otherwise he would have had no minister from his party such a puzzling appointment (Photo: Screenshot, GPO)

When the contract is breached

Paradoxically, it was actually Yair Lapid - head of "Yesh Atid" - the party of Welfare Minister Meir Cohen (who decided to appoint Yuval Elbshan to the National Insurance Administration), who better marked the problem even in his days as a talented columnist.

For Lapid, at least as a publicist, the government is a management company, whose contract between it and the people (in this parable is - we are the tenants who pay it the management fee) - Hopper.

Unfortunately, this is also the situation in the government, of which Yair Lapid is the deputy prime minister and its foreign minister.

The apartments - in the lottery, the queues for passports - in the combine, the queues for specialist doctors - in the mother of the combine.

So much so that the problem has escalated (to be fair, not just in the last year of the current government), so much so that the phrase "I was lucky" has become a trailer for any success in arranging something with the authorities:

"Yes bro, I was lucky, I left just as I was against the traffic and arrived on time", or - "What luck I had, just the nurse came out and asked if there is anyone waiting just for ...", or - "You do not understand, what luck - We arrived at the field on Friday night, when the ultra-Orthodox do not fly - and within 40 minutes we were already on duty "- because when the norm is broken, any fast and efficient service we receive from the state, is in our eyes a" Fox ".

The only problem is that Social Security customers do not travel to Ben Gurion Airport, which is a quick way to buy three perfumes and get the fourth for free. For them, any delay may manifest itself in an empty refrigerator or a missing medicine.

The outgoing CEO of the National Insurance Institute, Meir Spiegler. A manager who has gained experience and has managed one of the most complex institutions in Israel with talent (Photo: Reuven Castro)

Spiegler as an example

Not all this opening comes to say that while ideals, of any kind, we have in abundance, we have very few managers who also know how to turn a vision into a functioning reality, one that knows how to break away from parts of the ideology for day-to-day doing.

Meir Spiegler, for example, the outgoing director general of the National Insurance Institute, was one of those talented managers. He is a moderate right-wing man, a "semi-political" appointment of former Welfare Minister Haim Katz, : He was the CEO of a small government ministry (religions), the VP of human resources at a large government company (Israel Post) and the CEO of a budget-intensive body (JNF) before he was appointed to manage Social Security.

It's not that Spiegler had no agenda - in the eyes of many he is held to have made those in need of Social Security services immediately suspicious to respectable clients, and it was no easy task at an institution that for many years saw its role in protecting the public coffers from thugs and charlatans. Lots of them, because of which many who really need the services of the institution are also suspected).

But from the moment he outlined the path, he began to manage - and to continue the "Sharoni" image, the Corona plague was his canal success: the fact that the National Insurance Institute (and the Tax Authority, but that's another matter), met all Israeli citizens in a moment of Anxiety - and gave almost everyone a reasonable and even good service, returned the color to the cheeks of the workers and the pride of the unit.

Which of the following will bring Yuval Elbashan to one of the most complex and difficult managerial positions in Israel?

It's hard to know, since Albashan has never run large systems.

This is not to say that he does not have (perhaps) the ability - and there are certainly impressive chapters in his biography that they are all social action, but hello - here is looking for a chief of staff and not a social activist!

Minister of Welfare Meir Cohen.

Even he will have a hard time defending the puzzling appointment (Photo: TPS, Shalom Shalom)

Chief of Staff on Citizens

It is no coincidence that I was hanged by the senior IDF commander. To be the director general of the National Insurance Institute means to be "chief of staff for civilians", with only fewer means of management. It heads a body that has a clear hierarchy, that is - in terms of authority it is easy to manage - and has a long and professional chain of command of permanent staff

. That is to say, the choice of the person in charge cannot be a declarative choice,

and here the "social" minister chooses the "outstanding" social activist.

Albashan of course is not without rights.

He has a rich resume in managing social struggles, he has an academic career, even an artistic chapter as a writer.

All this is very impressive (without cynicism), but none of this, apart from the attitude (important but not enough) is irrelevant to the command of an army of officials in charge of one of the most sensitive fronts of the State of Israel.

The only common chapter in Spiegler and Albashan's biography is in the fact that they both belonged to the faculty at the Ono Academic Campus, only that while one of them is a graduate of the entire required chain of management, having not even a single minute of experience.

And let there be no doubt: the National Insurance Institute does not need a visionary.

He needs a manager, a commander - something to pray for Yuval Albashan, mainly because no chapter in his biography indicates such abilities.

The Ministers of Housing and Justice launch the "Discounted Apartment" lottery.

The feeling is that the Minister of Welfare has also begun to spin the election roulette (Photo: Government Press Office, Sivan Shachor, Anaba)

The scent of the ballot box and money in the bank

And of course, above all, a heavy cloud hovers: in the weeks when Housing Minister Zeev Elkin is photographed with his party leader and Justice Minister Gideon Saar - launching the dubious operation of the apartment lottery, in the week when Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked and Deputy Minister Avir Kara are photographed with binders and announce the easing For the self-employed - and in a week when Meir Cohen, a social activist and academic, lacks proven managerial skills, for one of the most complex management positions in Israel, the suspicion arises that everything is part of an election campaign that has not yet been announced but has already begun.

The problem is that the government will change, an election campaign will pass - and the people who need urgent social security services will not go anywhere.

They certainly deserve sympathy that Albashan can offer in abundance, but more than that they deserve professional management.

Or in plain language: it's nice to have someone who understands exactly why they need an increased pension, but the job of the Social Security director is "just" to make sure you get paid on time.

Minister Shaked and Deputy Minister Kara.

Have you seen their election show yet? (Photo: Mark Neiman, GPO)

• Of money

• Opinions

Tags

• Social Security

• NII

• Yuval Albashan

• Meir Cohen

• Yair Lapid

• Ariel Sharon