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| Innovative
‘Captains of Lives’ |
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| Mr Lohman Yew,
Deputy Director/Chief-of-Staff
of Prisons, receiving the I-Class
plaque from Dr Joseph Pious, General
Manager, Productivity and Innovation,
SPRING Singapore. |
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The Singapore
Prison Service (SPS) recently attained the
Singapore Innovation Class. In this story,
SPS shares its journey towards innovation
and organisational excellence.
In 1999, SPS embarked on a “visioning”
process to develop its shared vision. To achieve
its desired end state of being an exemplary
prison system, the staff had to change their
mindset. Instead of viewing themselves as
custodians of prisoners, they began seeing
themselves as “Captains of Lives”.
SPS’ shared vision compels staff to
be innovative. This mindset change has given
birth to many innovative ideas and projects.
One innovative project is the Internet Home
Tele-visit, which allows families of inmates
to visit their loved ones in incarceration
from the comfort of their homes through the
Internet. Such an initiative is especially
beneficial to the elderly and the handicapped
family members of inmates. The project trial
was sponsored by The Enterprise Challenge
(TEC) scheme and the project eventually won
the TEC Award in 2002.
Other initiatives include involving inmates
in WITs and getting them to perform some routine
functions previously handled by staff. This
helps to build up the confidence, knowledge
and skills of inmates, hence helping them
to reintegrate into society more successfully.
SPS’s organisational culture has also
changed since 1999. It has evolved from one
that is top-down in approach to one that is
more open, proactive and forward-looking.
Staff are encouraged to come together to share,
learn, innovate and experiment.
To facilitate interaction among staff, Learning
Centres have been established in institutions,
the Prisons Staff Training School and the
Prison Headquarters (HQ) to provide conducive
environments for informal discussions among
staff.
At Prisons HQ, informal breakfast meetings
are held every Monday and attended by the
directorate and key branch heads. Two heads
of institutions/branches are rotated to sit
in the meetings. Innovative ideas are surfaced
and discussed. Such meetings are replicated
at individual institutions.
SPS has also become more open to receiving
feedback. Since 2001, the views of inmates,
ex-inmates, family members and community partners
have been collected through surveys, interviews
and focus group discussions.
During SPS’ Workplan Seminar 2002, feedback
on the changes in
the organisation was sought from three inmates
through live video-conferencing. During Workplan
Seminar 2003, an ex-inmate shared his experiences
inside the prison and his struggle to regain
normalcy and gainful employment before succeeding
in life.
SPS officers actively participate in SSS and
WITs. Over the past three years, there has
been a steady increase in the number of SSS
and WIT ideas contributed. The number of ideas
contributed by staff grew from 8,331 in 2000
to 17,381 in 2002. The number of WIT projects
also increased from 244 in 2000 to 274 projects
in 2002.
The staff have done SPS proud by winning four
out of the seven outstanding departmental
awards during the Ministry of Home Affairs’
ExCEL Convention 2003 to clinch the Outstanding
Department in Improvement Teams Award for
the third consecutive year.
SPS teams also did very well at the PS21 ExCEL
Convention and the National Quality Circle
Convention 2003. |
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| By
SPS |
