Reform needed in civil service
In keeping with the recent Public Service Week celebrations, leaders should commit to reforming the civil service from the ground up.
Certainly, there are many hard-working public officers who deserve to be recognised and honoured, as they were last week. But there are also serious problems facing the government bureaucracy, much of which is plagued by bloating, wastage and inefficiency.
Recently, examples of shortcomings in the public service have been highlighted with startling clarity by the Complaints Commission. The agency’s reports have brought to light egregious cases of injustice, ministerial interference and unprofessional behaviour in multiple government agencies.
Unfortunately, successive governments have failed to tackle comprehensive reform. Instead, leaders have launched a string of much-hyped stopgap measures, which, though perhaps beneficial on a small scale, have fallen far short of what is needed.
There was cause for optimism in August 2011, when the former administration commissioned KPMG to carry out a $300,000 human resources review.
The consultants were tasked with developing updated “role profiles” for more than 3,000 public officers’ positions; detailing potential redundancies; and producing recommendations to improve the service’s effectiveness.
The exercise, we postulated at the time, should prove to be a valuable tool for identifying areas for improvement.
But since KPMG’s taxpayer-funded report was submitted to government in April 2012, it has not been made public, and leaders have not announced the way forward.
The current government, which has repeatedly promised transparency, should release the report very soon. Then officials should work with public officers and the wider community to devise a strategy for comprehensive reform.
The VI is lucky to be able to afford its robust civil service, which provides myriad employment opportunities and wide-ranging services. Moreover, since the start of the global financial crisis, it has managed to avoid large-scale job cuts, unlike many of its counterparts in the region.
But these luxuries should not be taken for granted. If reform does not come soon, harder choices might follow.
The public service, after all, plays a critical role in helping the VI to remain globally competitive — a responsibility that has taken on an outsized importance in the post-2008 world economy.
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