What would you consider as the turning points in your career?

The fact that I got a scholarship from the Government actually determined how my life became, because at that time, my family was not in a position to send me for overseas study. So when I got the overseas scholarship, it really opened new vistas for me. From then on, the path was set for me. I think there weren’t really any turning points in my career, because as admin officers, we were always sent to do different jobs. I started in finance, I went on to national development, community development, education and tax, so it’s a very diverse bag.

Over the years, you have held numerous, diverse portfolios. Which did you find most fulfilling and why?

I think my posting in IRAS was very interesting for many reasons. Before, when I was in the ministries, I was working on the policy level. But when I went to IRAS, I had to do everything from beginning to end — from coming up with the policies to seeing them all the way through to implementation. That was quite a fulfilling thing, because for many of the officers nowadays, unless they have a stint in the operational areas, they might not be able to see some of the intricacies of implementing the policies that they propose. So in a way, it’s good that they have a stint in operations work so that later on, when they propose policies, they can better appreciate some of the considerations that have to be borne in mind.

Describe some of the challenging experiences you faced in your career.

When I first started as a young admin officer in 1969, fresh from overseas, there was no such thing as training. I was just sent to work. There was nothing to prepare me. I didn’t learn what the Civil Service was all about, what’s the difference between a minute and a letter, how to address people. The first day I went to work, I was called up by Dr Goh Keng Swee. He was then the Finance Minister. He wanted me to do certain things for him, but I just didn’t know how. So I had to learn fast. Those were very challenging years. In those days after the British withdrawal, there was a lot of unemployment. Dr Winsemius led the UN team to propose the strategy for Singapore’s economic development. Later he became our economic advisor. He used to come regularly and I happened to be selected to look after him, serve him, attend his meetings. I had a very challenging time learning about the economics that he was proposing. At that time, he was proposing very radical policies, something which I think formed the basis of what we are today. His main point really was that we shouldn’t be doing things that our neighbours can do. Our neighbours have a lot of cheap labour. So if we try to make our labour cheap and industries come in because of cheap labour, before long we’d be out of a job. And that’s true, even today. So he proposed a policy to raise wages gradually, because once the wages are higher, then only industries that can pay these wages will come. From there, the National Wages Council was set up. One of the intentions was to push wages up. By virtue of that, we reached a situation where we moved into industries that others, especially in the region, would find difficult to compete in. In the Ministry of National Development, I became Permanent Secretary at age 32. I had to work with people who were very much older than me. The challenge in those years was really how to build the physical infrastructure as quickly as we could. At that time, we were building housing board flats at up to 70,000 units a year. We were rushing to build flyovers, housing estates and industrial estates. We were doing reclamation at the rate of 1 acre a day. Much of the infrastructure we see today has its roots then. There was a lot of urban redevelopment. We sold a lot of sites. Most of the modern buildings you see in the city today were built then. Then I moved on to Community Development. At that time, community development and social services did not have the attention they are getting today, so it was quite a bit of an uphill task. But we made some progress in areas like getting the voluntary and welfare organisations to take over some of the roles. At that time, the then Ministry of Community Development was also involved in culture. So I was involved in the first planning phase for the Esplanade and our cultural district. Those were interesting times. Next I went on to the Education Ministry. The challenge for me at that time was how to improve and raise the status of teachers. Teachers were under a lot of stress and pressure partly because they were doing a lot of non-teaching type of work. For example, every year they had to bother with issuing bus passes to students in every class. They were all complaining about it. So what I decided was to issue only one bus pass for the whole of a student’s career, whether in primary or secondary school. This was one of the things we did to try to reduce the teachers’ workload. Another challenge was getting more people to be teachers. We raised the status and pay of teachers. At that time, when teachers went for training, they were just paid an allowance of $500. I changed that and gave them full pay while they were in training. We also had many recruitment drives. As a result, we managed to bring in a lot of teachers. At that time, we also realised that many of the principals were quite senior. We needed to quickly bring up the next generation of principals. To me, the most important person is the principal. Behind every good school is a good principal. So I spent a lot of time interviewing, selecting, spotting talent. I just got some reports recently that this is bearing fruit — we now have many good principals in our schools. I’m very happy to hear that. IRAS was the last place I went to. When I went there, I realised that people always see the tax authority as a very intimidating place. The traditional concept of a tax authority is that of a regulator. It’s there, you have to go to it whether you like it or not. So together with senior management we set about to change that mindset. We decided that we are actually a service organisation. We’re here to serve the public. We believe that most people want to pay their taxes so we should make it easy for them. So we went about all our service initiatives. I must say that the staff of IRAS really responded very well. Even today, among tax authorities in the world, we are unique. Most tax authorities talk about how to collect more taxes, how to catch people who are not paying. Our approach is different. I’m very happy to say that our approach is increasingly finding currency in many countries, Australia and the US, for example. The vision of IRAS is to partner taxpayers in nation building. Taxpayers must know that whatever they contribute is actually used for a national purpose. We approach tax paying from an entirely different perspective. The cheapest way of collecting tax is when people comply voluntarily. If you have to go and chase them, catch them, it will cost a lot of money. And in IRAS, the cost of collection has gone down tremendously. Almost every year it goes down. We are able to do this because the entire IRAS staff closely identify with the vision and feel proud of their contribution to nation building. And it makes me feel really good when I read the many compliments taxpayers give to my staff. There are about 600 compliments a month. So I feel we have done well in that area. And if we can do well in tax, we can do well in many other areas following the same model.

Under your leadership, IRAS became one of the world’s leading and most cost-effective tax administrations. Even the World Bank cited IRAS as a model in tax administration. What do you see as important new directions for IRAS?

IRAS has changed its whole computer system. Next year, taxpayers can look forward to a really new experience. And we’re at the leading edge; nobody has done it before. I think the challenge is for IRAS to do even more for the business sector in aspects like improving transparency, clarity and certainty. Businesses want decisions to be clear, rules to be clear, things to be done within a short timeframe, and decisions once made to be certain. We’re working towards that and once we have achieved that, IRAS is going to be very helpful in promoting further economic investments in Singapore because, other than low tax rates, companies will go to countries where they have little hassle with the tax authorities. Every country can cut tax rates but not all tax authorities are business-friendly and helpful. I would like to see us move in that direction so that IRAS will be an even greater part of Singapore Inc., and not just there to collect money.

What were the key lessons you gained over the years?

I’ve learnt that you cannot achieve unless you have your people behind you and that’s critical. The difference between any organisation is not the beautiful building, infrastructure and IT system but really the people. If you can get your people to believe in what they are doing and aim for the same vision and goals, I think a lot of things can be achieved. And, of course, everyone is different, no two persons are alike. So it’s a question of how to capitalise on the strengths of your staff and make allowances for some of the weaknesses they have. They must be allowed to make genuine mistakes if they really make an effort. In IRAS, every complaint is a learning opportunity. It’s ok to make mistakes, so long as you learn from them. It’s not that you have to agree to everything, but you have to build good relationships, meaning that we understand that we may disagree but we’re working for a common interest and that’s what’s important. And in that respect, I would say that when I introduced Learning Organisation in IRAS, that really was very, very helpful. Learning Organisation’s basic tenet is that the best decisions are made in places with the best relationships. If you have a climate that encourages people to be open, even if they disagree with you, you can still be friends. The best decision is always made when many people contribute from their various perspectives.