The island’s largest public sector employer has a workforce of just under 4,000 full-time equivalent staff, according to long-delayed report of the Public Services Commission.

Delays in publishing the PSC annual reports for the last three years were the subject of a tense exchange in Tynwald this month.

Former PSC chair Kate Lord-Brennan accused Lawrie Hooper of having been a Minister of Double Standards when he pressed for the release of the documents.

A combined report for the years 2021-22 and 2022-23 has now been published on the Tynwald website.

In it, Ms Lord-Brennan, who was chair of the PSC during those years, said the need to reformat and get better value from any PSC reporting was part of the reason for the delay in its production.

She said as the incoming chair in late 2021 it was ‘readily apparent’ that the focus and governance of the Commission needed to change.

This, she said, included a need to ‘focus on productivity and work that is meaningful for the public and re-orient public service around that’.

There was also a need for ‘much more clarity and understanding of the roles and functions within government departments – including management span’, she added.

The report states that as of the end of March 2023, the PSC employed 3,999.8 FTE stationed across the government departments, boards and offices.

There were 576.7 employees at an Administrative Officer (AO) level, 713.8 employees at an Executive Officer (EO) level, 466.9 at a Higher Executive Officer (HEO) level and 188.4 at a Senior Executive officer (SEO).

The report notes that the size and make-up of the public service is a much wider question than the number of employees in the PSC and there had been a potential for incorrect and sometimes duplicated reporting of employee numbers using the government’s People Information system.