For more than a decade now, the private sector has been looked up to as the benchmark for public sector service standards. Civil servants were told to think of themselves as managers, and to regard the public as their customers. There were good reasons for this attitudinal change but, now, maybe enough is enough. Let's not get carried away with glorifying the private sector or lose sight of aspects of the Public Service mindset that shouldn't change.

After all, whether an organisation is in private or government hands isn't the deciding factor behind good service. Competition and accountability are more critical. If an organisation is a monopoly supplier, it's tough to muster the will to raise service standards, whether it's a private firm or a government agency. Worse still if it's a captive and powerless market - just think of the demeaning, almost abusive treatment you might have endured when applying for a visa or passing through immigration to enter some otherwise civilised country. Even worse if staff have iron rice bowls with rewards unrelated to their service standards.

Around the world, these structural traits tend to describe government services rather than private firms, so it's not surprising that businesses are associated with providing better service. But, to return to the visa example, merely privatising such functions wouldn't help, because they wouldn't change the asymmetry of power behind poor service. Indeed, private firms can be less accountable and therefore more abusive than public officials. (When the Americans in Iraq outsourced security and interrogation jobs to private mercenaries, it wasn't to give Iraqi citizens better treatment - quite the opposite.)

Sure, there is much to learn from how Robinsons staff handle customer queries, or how Amazon.com's computers tailor their recommendations to your tastes, or how your insurance agent remembers your birthday. But many private sector practices are less exemplary. Companies are becoming more discriminatory in dishing out good service, with the red carpet treatment being reserved for big spenders. Thanks to caller-ID software and dedicated hotlines, company staff pick up the phone swiftly when a "premium" customer calls but put others on hold. Frequent fliers get to use airport transit lounges and enjoy free food and drink, while families on a budget make do with a patch of carpet to rest on and snacks that mum has packed. Good service costs money and a business would rather not waste it on people from whom, according to its customer databases, it is unlikely to recoup those costs.

The public sector can't have that attitude: its dealings with members of the public shouldn't be coloured by class. This is a challenge that will probably get tougher, but will also become more important. Public servants have always dealt with people from all walks of life, but Singapore's widening income gap means that those walks may increasingly seem like they're on different planets. There are the educated, sophisticated and well-connected Singaporeans who know how to demand the best treatment, and at the other extreme are the poor and powerless who can probably be brushed off and condescended to with impunity. Private businesses will deal with these differences according to their commercial interests - and thus exacerbate the social divide. But in schools, hospitals and other government offices, we depend on the public sector to treat all Singaporeans like they are premium, platinum members of an elite club called the Public.