Revitalizing the Public Service

Government agencies are among the most complex organizations in nearly every country in the world. They often are large, have multiple objectives, and face increasing demands to deliver more services at a lower cost. As a result of this complexity, a government is faced with many organizational issues, including: redesigning their organizations and their interaction with stakeholders, shaping major reform programs, including changing mind-sets and behaviors, transforming overall performance,

building leadership capacity, creating talent management strategies, and enhancing public sector capabilities.

This transformation is required more than ever now because regional investors look at Sri Lanka with more confidence, more commitment and continuance and acceleration of their investment plans. Now to facilitate this we need a highly motivated and competent public service. This will be a key element to our future success. What Sri Lanka needs is, like in Singapore, a powerful, competent and dynamic – technocratic bureaucracy, shielded from political pressure to devise and implement well-honed interventions. While we need authoritarian leaders, they also must be willing to grant a voice and genuine authority to competent technocratic elite.

All governments world over now know that rapid economic development is impossible without the cooperation and support of the private sector. When the economy prospers, more money will come into the government coffers for economic development and public welfare. That means better salaries for the public servants. Therefore, the government needs to create a culture where everyone has an interest in seeing progress and a public service that works with the private sector rather than against it. The government to establish their legitimacy and win the support of society at large has to promote the principle of shared growth, promising in effect that as the economy expands, all groups will benefit. But sharing growth raises serious coordination problems. To tackle these complex coordination problems, the government needs institutions and mechanisms to reassure competing groups that no one group would get undue advantage over the other.

Competent Public Service

Therefore the government needs to build a competent, dynamic, honest and relatively young technocratic cadre and insulate them from political interference. If not, there is no way that the government can convince and win the cooperation of the international business community to invest in this country. In fact, in many NICs, competent technocrats have helped their leaders to devise credible economic interventions. In order to foster an effective bureaucracy, the current administration, in addition to tapping the traditionally adopted practices, would also have to employ numerous other mechanisms to increase the appeal of a public service career, thereby heightening competition and improving the pool of applicants. The government therefore needs to have a system to attract young talent and ensure that only the best get accelerated promotions. The overall principle long term should be to pay competitive salaries, recruitment and promotion should be merit based and those who make it to the top on merit should be amply rewarded. In government, as in nearly everything else, you get what you pay for.

There is ample research to show that more favourably the total compensation package compares with the private sector the better the quality of the public service. Not surprisingly, Singapore, which is widely perceived to have the region’s most competent and upright bureaucracy, pays its bureaucrats best. In economies where public sector wages are good, if not equal to the private sector, prestige will persuade some talented individuals to forego higher earnings in the private sector. However, prestige can only be enhanced by having a highly competitive, merit based recruitment and promotion process via an independent public service.

The retirement plan, a benefit normally not available in the private sector, could also be an incentive to join the public sector, provided a proper working environment is created.

(The writer was Chairman ETF 2001-2004)