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| PS21: Empowering
the Public Service |
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| Mr Ho delivering the keynote address. |
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In his keynote address at the PS21 ExCEL
Convention 2005, Head of Civil Service Peter
Ho emphasised the importance of the PS21
movement. Below is the full text of his speech.
This year, we celebrate Singapore’s 40th anniversary.
When Singapore gained independence on 9th
August 1965, suddenly and unexpectedly, the
challenges facing the new nation were enormous.
But we pulled together, and through a combination
of hard work, far-sighted and pragmatic policies,
and not a small amount of good luck, we beat
the odds to arrive at where we are today. Going
forward, while there is good reason for optimism,
the future is far from assured.
In some ways, the challenges are greater when
you are successful, compared to when you are down,
as we were in 1965. Expectations today are very
high and we are competing in a different league. All
the low-hanging fruits have been plucked.
Singapore itself is changing. Our citizens are
well-educated and well-travelled. They speak
their minds and they expect more from the
Government.
Furthermore, the geo-political environment is evolving
rapidly. The rise of China and the emergence of
India, transnational threats like terrorism, haze,
SARS and avian flu, the global competition for energy,
are reshaping and transforming the strategic landscape.
In such a fast-changing and often uncertain environment,
Singapore must be nimble,
to seize opportunities when they arise, and to avoid
the pitfalls as
they appear.
The Public Service has to evolve to keep up with
these changes. Today it is a large and complex
system that is diverse in its composition and
profile. Even without the SAF, we have some
120,000 people who are employed in the
Public Service. There are policemen, teachers,
soldiers, scientists, economists, statisticians,
meteorologists and engineers, clerical and
administrative staff. The list goes on. They
have different capacities and motivations. We
have officers who are PhDs. We have officers
with primary school education. Some have had
extensive private sector experience before joining
the public sector. Others are fresh out of school
or university. The people of the Public Service
are a microcosm of society at large, reflecting
its diversity, values, hopes and fears.
The Public Service has a special role in society.
Despite its diversity, the Public Service has one
core mission, which is to work with the elected
Government to ensure Singapore’s continued
survival, security and success. Collectively our
duty is to serve the people of Singapore to
provide a better life for all.
Today the Public Service is organised into 15
ministries and over 60 statutory boards, each
with its own mission and functions. This flat
and decentralised arrangement gives individual
agencies the autonomy to act fast, and the
freedom to innovate. However, more and more
of the most strategic challenges that our nation
faces require multi-agency responses.
Take terrorism, for example. No single ministry
or government agency has the full range of
competencies or capabilities to deal with this
threat. Instead, the efforts of many agencies have
to be coordinated and brought to bear on this
problem. That is why there are many agencies,
including the Police and the SAF, working together
as a team to secure Jurong Island and to protect
other vital installations like Changi Airport.
Population issues, avian flu, opening up new
markets overseas are other examples of such
strategic challenges which must be met by the
Public Service working in a networked system
that taps into the resources of many agencies,
and creates synergies from the efforts of public
officers from many ministries.
But we should recognise that public officers
working together in a multi-agency framework
is not in the natural order of things. The natural
instinct of public officers is to associate their
primary duty with their parent ministry or
statutory board. Their performance is assessed
on what they do inside the ministry, not outside
it. Working on inter-ministry issues is often seen
as an extra-curricular activity.
Going forward, the Public Service must
change if it is to operate effectively multi-agency,
networked mode. The mindset of our people in the
Public Service must change. They must see work
at the whole-of-government level as important
as work within their respective agencies.
The key is our people sharing a set of values. Each
and every public officer must understand that
he or she has a larger duty, a duty of common
purpose with other public officers to advance the
good of Singapore and Singaporeans.
The PS21 movement plays a central role in
forging shared values within the Public Service.
Values are not acquired just by attending lectures
or taking part in a course. Values are absorbed by
seeing and doing. “Knowing is not enough; we
must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.”
Through the PS21 movement, we learn about what
is important in the Public Service: by looking after
our people, by focusing on quality service, and
through creating systems for greater efficiency and
productivity. It is experienced through participating
in WITS and contributing to the SSS.
The habits that the PS21 movement develops
among public officers — habits of teamwork, of
always trying to do things better, of wanting to
make a difference — in turn reinforce shared values
of the Public Service of upholding Integrity, Service
to country and continually striving for Excellence.
In his speech at the CAPAM Biennial Conference
held in Singapore last year, Commonwealth
Secretary-General Don McKinnon observed that
Singapore is “one of the most successful growth
stories of any small state in the world at least over
the last 100 years, because it has adapted, adjusted
and updated”. This is an encouraging comment from
a foreign observer. But we cannot afford to indulge
in self-congratulation. We can only stay ahead of
the curve if we are able to keep improving and keep
changing before change is forced upon us.
Most of us view change with some apprehension.
This is because change forces us out of our
comfort zones. Change means being prepared to
set aside tried and tested practices and replacing
them with the new and untested. But the biggest
risk and the largest failure will be failing to take
the risk to change.
Proactive, positive change is an act of
leadership. I think it is often overlooked that
leadership is critical to the success of the PS21
movement. Making a suggestion to improve your
organisation is an act of leadership. Taking part
in WITS is an act of leadership.
All of you in the audience are leaders. I
am not referring to just the CEOs or PSs, but
to leaders at all levels. For the Public Service
to continually change and improve, public
officers hold a special responsibility. Change
and improvement cannot happen without strong
leadership at all levels.
How you exercise your authority and leadership
determines what the organisation can achieve.
Leaders cannot just pass down initiatives
like a mandate from heaven, and expect buy-in.
Leaders must act. Leaders set the standards. The
essence of leadership is about motivating people
to perform to their maximum potential.
ExCEL (Excellence through Continuous Enterprise
and Learning) is an excellent vehicle for you to
exercise leadership and to develop your staff. The
SSS is an avenue for you to get your staff to think
about improvement. WITS is a platform for your
staff to get together, build consensus, and agree
on the way forward. Committing to 100 hours of
learning underlines your responsibility as a leader
to ensure that your people learn and learn well.
If each public officer thinks of a very simple idea
that creates a value of just $1, it means $120,000
for the Public Service. More importantly, when an
officer learns to think about improvement, then he is
more likely to do better next time, to come up with
value creation of $10, or $100, or more, in future.
If we do this collectively as a public service, you
can imagine the tremendous value created overall.
But it is really not so much about the money, or the
value creation per se. It is about empowering and
developing officers to do things that they may have
thought they were unable to do
before. Value creation
and the results will
naturally follow.
The PS21 movement is
10 years old this year.
PS21 is about “being
in time for the future”
— about how we lead our
people, put in place robust
systems, and harness all these resources toward
our common goal to serve Singapore effectively
and excellently, not just for one day, but every
day. PS21 is for an empowered Public Service
that will create an excellent Singapore for an
extraordinary future. |
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| Next: Taking
stock of ExCEL |
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| Related
Articles |
| PS21:
Empowering the Public Service |
| Taking
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“Making initiatives successful
is all about focus and
passionate commitment. The
drumbeat must be relentless.
Every leadership action
must demonstrate total
commitment to the initiative.
”
Jack Welch |
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