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| ACE-ing their
way to excellence! |
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| Representatives
from the top five agencies with Second
Minister for Finance Raymond Lim (centre)
and Second Minister for Trade and Industry
Dr Vivian Balakrishnan. |
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In July this year, five
outstanding public agencies were presented with
the Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE)
Awards 2005 for their excellence in being pro-enterprise
where regulatory processes are concerned.
These agencies made laudable achievements in the
areas of transparency, pro-enterprise orientation,
compliance cost, customer responsiveness and review
of rules.
The top five agencies are:
| 1 |
Central Provident
Fund Board (CPF Board) |
| 2 |
Maritime and
Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) |
| 3 |
Singapore Customs |
| 4 |
Inland Revenue Authority
of Singapore |
| 5 |
JTC Corporation |
CPF Board, which was ranked first overall, was among
the top in all five categories. The organisation
credits its customer service-centric culture as
a winning factor.
Said Mr Ng Hock Keong, Director (Customer Relations
Division): “CPF Board has cultivated our staff to
always walk the extra mile to help our customers.
We also have in place a feedback management system
to constantly listen to our customers’ needs and
enhance our processes. This has enabled us to develop
easy-to-use systems for customers to transact with
us conveniently.”
For MPA, the ACE awards is a reflection of its conscious
efforts to better serve the maritime industry. The
award also reflects MPA’s open partnership approach
that has resulted in the development of more pro-business
policies. For example, MPA set up a S$7-million
Maritime Business Development scheme to support
qualifying parties keen to establish new maritime
business units or products or services in Singapore.
Said Director (Policy) Mrs Mary Seet-Cheng: “We
will continue to adopt a conscious and consistent
strategy of seeking win-win partnerships with the
maritime industry, related organisations and institutions
and other relevant stakeholders.”
Each year, the Rules Action Crucible (Rules AC)
of ACE commissions an independent consultant to
conduct a survey to assess the pro-enterprise orientation
of government agencies.
The survey measures the quality of the regulations
and processes of 25 government agencies by assessing
the perceptions and expectations of more than 2,000
businesses that have interacted with these agencies.
Various business transactions with government agencies,
such as licence applications and the handling of
feedback, were examined in the last survey. A total
of 2,216 face-to-face interviews (double the number
in 2004) were conducted with enterprises which had
interacted at least once with the agency in the
past one year. The number of respondents per agency
also increased from 68 to 80 this year.
A Pro-Enterprise Index was computed based on the
aggregated scores of an agency’s performance in
five areas: compliance cost, review of rules, transparency,
customer responsiveness and pro-enterprise orientation.
Respondents had to complete a 40-question survey
covering various aspects of the five key areas.
There are plans for a third survey to be conducted
in mid-2006. In a move towards greater transparency,
ACE plans to release the full proenterprise rankings
from 2006 onwards. |
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By
MTI
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