Chief Secretary Should Not Be Chief Clerk
Judging from the gushing praises, Chief Secretary Sidek Hassan is performing miracles with his Special Task Force to Facilitate Business (Pemudah, its Malay acronym) committee to streamline the civil service. A reality check is in order.
It reflects how out of touch our top civil servants are from the realities on the ground that it took Sidek and his Director-General of the Public Service Department Ismail Adam to make an unannounced visit to a District Office in Selangor for them to realize how difficult it is to pay one’s “quit rent.”
Then they were shocked to find that the District Officer was out of his office. Again that reflects their naivety and ignorance of the current sorry state of the government machinery. Perhaps they put too much faith on the recent glowing report of IMD’s World Competitive Yearbook that placed the Malaysian government ahead of Japan and Germany in terms of efficiency. The Malaysian public knows better.
It is pathetic that these top civil servants are reduced to being chief clerks checking on the keranis (junior clerks) to make sure that they are at their desks attending to their customers.
Sidek’s unannounced visit is now fast becoming a legend, of a meticulous and diligent top civil servant paying attention to the smallest of operational details. Even previously cynical commentators are now heaping praises on the man. This chorus is repeated by the seasoned corporate figures co-opted into Pemudah.
If those corporate figures were truly impressed, then it does not say much of the crispness of their own management. Alternatively, they had such low expectations that any improvement would impress them. My hunch is that their praises are nothing more than shrewd maneuverings to be on the good side of the government. In a country where the nexus between government and private sector is fuzzy, this is expected. It would not surprise me that their companies do substantial business with the government.
Interestingly, although Sidek had been interviewed umpteen times, no one asked what disciplinary actions (if any) he took against that errant District Officer and, more importantly, his immediate superior.
If past experience is any guide, the poor underpaid kerani would bear the heaviest punishment, with the District Officer reassigned, and his immediate superior left untouched.
Misplaced Emphasis on Process Instead of Policy
Pemudah’s emphasis has been exclusively on administrative processes. It reflects the deep rot that a simple procedure that would have been simple only a decade or two ago would today be tortuous and drawn out. Nonetheless that does not stop Pemudah from trumpeting its easy victories. These administrative details should have been streamlined at the mid management level; they are essentially staff work.
What Sidek should be doing is to teach those middle manages how to identify, analyze, and solve their problems. That would have been far more effective than surprise visits and issuing edicts from high above. Sidek could not possibly know the operational problems at the various land offices; the issues in Ulu Selangor would be very different from that at Petaling Jaya. With the urban and more educated clients at Petaling Jaya they could try on-line payments, for example. That would not be possible in Ulu Selangor.
Tun Razak hired the American consultant Milton Esman in the 1970s to spruce up the civil service. Esman’s personal accounts are highly illuminating. For example, during his first meeting with our top civil servants, he was confounded that they behaved like little school kids. Their attitude was: “You are the expert; you tell us what to do!”
At Treasury, he asked them their major issues. Their immediate response: “Overworked and understaffed!” They could also have added, “Underpaid!”
They complained of the volumes of vouchers they had to scrutinize. Esman suggested that they study the bills they had already processed and group them by their face value. To their surprise, a substantial portion of the vouchers were under a certain amount, and those were routinely paid without further auditing. Esman suggested if they were to henceforth make a policy that all such bills be routinely paid or better yet, authorize the various departments to pay them without referral to Treasury, their work load would be reduced considerably. They would then have extra time to scrutinize the important big bills. As for the smaller vouchers, all they need would be to do random checks for quality control.
Through such exercises Esman taught those civil servants how to isolate and solve their problems. It was far more effective than lecturing and making surprise visits. Oh yes, Esman did not spend his time giving press interviews!
On a more substantive matter, by the time civil servants reach the top, certainly at the Secretary-General and Director-General levels, their concerns should not be staff, administrative, or operational details rather with policy analysis and policy making.
Consider the government’s recent decision to restrict the sale of subsidized essential goods to non-Malaysians. Such policies should first be vetted by senior civil servants, addressing such issues as their practicality and cost of implementation. Does that mean that we now have to show our passports or identity cards to shop? What about citizens buying for their non-citizen neighbors?
Similarly with the graduate employment scheme; what are the social, economic and other consequences for the government to assume the role of employer of last resort? Egypt has such a policy; it now has one of the most bloated and inefficient civil service, as well as a university system totally unresponsive to the needs of the marketplace.
Sidek Hassan and his colleagues should be studying and recommending solutions to the cabinet on the impact of the current American credit crunch and impending recession, not checking the time cards of clerks in a district office in Ulu Selangor.
Ambrin Buang, Not Sidek Hassan, The True Hero
Sidek need not look far to find examples of excellence; he could find it within his own civil service, specifically in the exemplary performance of Auditor-General Ambrin Buang.
Ambrin could have reduced himself to simply doing the traditional “bean counting” activities, of making sure that there are receipts for expenditures and other accounting minutiae. Make no mistake, those are essential details. The greater fallacy would be to assume that those are the only or even major duties of an auditor.
It reflects the diligence and professionalism of Ambrin that his Annual Report regularly grabs headlines. It also says much about our politicians and civil servants that they do not read those reports. He is not at all bashful in commenting on such boondoggles as the Sports Ministry’s planned facility in London as well as the RM50 screwdrivers.
Ambrin’s report gives a far more accurate (and depressing) picture of the sorry state of the government machinery, certainly far more realistic than that depicted by the IMD Yearbook or Pemudah’s too frequent glowing press releases. It is also revealing that Ambrin is not a member of Pemudah.
An insight on organizational behaviors is that public institutions, in particular the civil service, are not there to serve the citizens. Instead these institutions serve their own self interest while attempting to put a public face to it.
Recent policy initiatives as restricting the sale of subsidized items only to citizens and graduate employment scheme serve nothing more than to expand an already bloated civil service. The currency among civil servants is the size of their respective departments as measured by the number of employees and budget allocations, not whether certain policies would ease poverty or improve the education system.
The wisdom and success of President Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was their recognition of this essential truism. The folly of the Abdullah Administration is its naivety in believing that what is good for the civil service is good for Malaysia and Malaysians.
February 11th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Chief Clerk is too high a post for Sidek. He is, in all honesty, Bodohwi’s trusted errand boy or batman (valet). Sidek will roll at a snap of his master’s fingers. And he rolls pretty well too.
February 12th, 2008 at 2:06 am
In Malaysian civil service there is no such thing as delegating and empowerment. That is why you have so many Ketua Setia Usaha, Timbalan Ketua Setia Usaha,, Penolong Setia Usaha etc etc. Notice the title Ketua Setia Usaha direct translation Chief Secretary. So naturally they function as Secretaries doing the work of Secretaries
Secondly if you need to have something done and done right, you have to do it yourself. I once asked a clerk at JPA why JPA don’t recognize US Medical degree. The answer I got is policy. I then asked an officrr at JPA, again the answer is policy. I then asked the Pengarah at JPA, same answer. Finally I asked the Ketua Pengarah. Imagine the answer? Policy. So I wasted my time asking all these high ranking officers when the lowly office boy have given me the answer.
Thus Sidek Hassan has to do the leg work to ensure the civil servants are towing the line and getting his message. He has to “turun padang” to get bthe attention of the heirarchy. The Malaysian civil service is too demotivated to change. They seldom get disciplined or sacked so what’s new.
February 13th, 2008 at 8:49 am
If you are a government doctor, I think, you will view this top administrators in the Malaysian civil service including the Chief Secretary as beneficiaries of the government welfare program. What do they do? Really nothing, or if there is any it is to make thing more difficult for the professionals and also the public. They really ‘makan gaji buta’. They have been talking about using Key Performance Indicators to improve productivity of civil servants, and if so why is it necessary to make surprise check? In the private sector it is unthinkable and unproductive for a Managing Director of a trading company to check on the performance of the sales force by making a surprise check on the sales team in a particular region, and it is suffice to check the salesman performance from the sales report.
You will see many civil servants filling the seat of the cafeteria in Putrajaya during working hour. In Kuala Lumpur they loiter at the food court opposite Tanglin Clinic, also during working hour.
In the old days of the civil service the administrator in charge of personnel management is called Pegawai Perjawatan, but now they are called with the glamorous title Human Resource Officer. Unfortunately they know less about managing human resources. To this administrator it is all about how to get the most benefits from the government.
February 13th, 2008 at 10:34 am
And why shouldn’t the Chief Secretary not be the chief clerk?
After all ministers have encroached on to the civil servants turf and hijacked literally all their functions and roles as providers of professional input to the government of the day in how to maximise utilization of the nation’s resources.
Not that the politicians have really provided real professional inputs, but somehow all functions that were the purview of the civil service have been usurped by them. So top civil servants are relegated to making visits to check toilets and unopened complaints boxes in remote batang kali district. And unbelievably, they are praised for doing so.
But this is a malaise that has affected every section of the public sector. Ministers who should be having a commanding-heights approach to their portfolio and overseeing on a macro basis the strategies, impact and threats relating to their domains prefer the more sensationalized turun padang trips paying more attention to nitty-gritties that in a more efficiently run nation would have been left to the town clerk or enforcement officers at the grass root level.
I recall the Deputy Prime Minister no less with many top officials such as the Federal Territory minister in tow who officiated at the inauguration of the smart toilets in Kulala Lumpur. The whole day would have been wasted not to mention the resources spent for such a bash on the streets of bukit bintang. Ministers busy themselves attending the launching of new logos, or the new colors schemes for taxi drivers uniforms, opening boutiques and nasi kandar joints; and so the list goes on. Where is the sense of prioritization commensurate with the position? Where is the shame knowing that you are so highly compensated from public coffers to do such trivial and mundane tasks?
I remember many years ago watching a news item on TV of some minister officiating a fishery project by releasing some breeding fish into a pond, and all the ballyhoo that came with it. A chinese sitting at the next table said that they would do three times the work with none of the hoopla and in the end be five times as productive.
So the rot goes down the chain of command like sewage gravitating downwards toward the sewage plant and into the sea; hence chief secretary becomes a high-costing perk-inflated chief clerk. And sad to say they don’t even realize how silly they look, or if they do, they just don’t seem to care.
February 13th, 2008 at 10:35 am
And why shouldn’t the Chief Secretary not be the chief clerk?
After all ministers have encroached on to the civil servants turf and hijacked literally all their functions and roles as providers of professional input to the government of the day in how to maximise utilization of the nation’s resources.
Not that the politicians have really provided real professional inputs, but somehow all functions that were the purview of the civil service have been usurped by them. So top civil servants are relegated to making visits to check toilets and unopened complaints boxes in remote batang kali district. And unbelievably, they are praised for doing so.
But this is a malaise that has affected every section of the public sector. Ministers who should be having a commanding-heights approach to their portfolio and overseeing on a macro basis the strategies, impact and threats relating to their domains prefer the more sensationalized turun padang trips paying more attention to nitty-gritties that in a more efficiently run nation would have been left to the town clerk or enforcement officers at the grass root level.
I recall the Deputy Prime Minister no less with many top officials such as the Federal Territory minister in tow who officiated at the inauguration of the smart toilets in Kulala Lumpur. The whole day would have been wasted not to mention the resources spent for such a bash on the streets of bukit bintang. Ministers busy themselves attending the launching of new logos, or the new colors schemes for taxi drivers uniforms, opening boutiques and nasi kandar joints; and so the list goes on. Where is the sense of prioritization commensurate with the position? Where is the shame knowing that you are so highly compensated from public coffers to do such trivial and mundane tasks?
I remember many years ago watching a news item on TV of some minister officiating a fishery project by releasing some breeding fish into a pond, and all the ballyhoo that came with it. A chinese sitting at the next table said that they would do three times the work with none of the hoopla and in the end be five times as productive.
So the rot goes down the chain of command like sewage gravitating downwards toward the sewage plant and into the sea; hence chief secretary becomes a high-costing perk-inflated chief clerk. And sad to say they don’t even realize how silly they look doing so, or if they do, they just don’t seem to care.
February 14th, 2008 at 1:12 am
Sebagai rakyat biasa, saya selalu mengalami kesukaran bila berurusan dengan pejabat2 kerajaan. Sebagai contoh, kad pengenalan saya beralamat di negeri lain, tapi saya telah menetap si selangor hampir 7 tahun, lalu apabila saya ingin mendirikan rumah tangga saya perlu menukar alamat ke negeri selangor ( di sebabkan polisi pejabat agama negeri) tetapi apabila saya menghadirkan diri di pejabat pendaftaran, setelah membayar sejumlah wang dan menunggu proses siapnya kad pengenalan selama beberapa minggu, hasilnya hanya gambar saja di tukar, alasan yang di berikan pihak kerani di pejabat pendaftaran Shah Alam ialah saya meminta penukaran gambar baru bukan penukaran alamat.
Di mana logiknya, saya sebagai pengguna, dengan mengambil cuti tahunan pergi ke situ untuk menukar gambar baru. Sehingga sekarang saya masih tidak faham dengan pekerjaan mereka-mereka di pejabat pendaftaran yang mana terkenal sebagai jabatan kerajaan yang paling efektif dan efesyen!
Saya bekerja di sebuah syarikat swasta, ramai di kalangan teman pejabat saya, berkelulusan universiti tempatan bersungguh-sungguh untuk memohon jawatan dengan kerajaan dengan alasan kerja adalah mudah, boleh pergi minum kopi, makan tengah hari dan balik kerja lebih awal. Dan juga mudah memohon pinjaman perumahan atau membeli kereta.
Jadi, pihak ketua setiausaha harus memikirkan cara-cara untuk mengatasi masalah-masalah seperti ini dan bagaimana memastikan bakal-bakal penjawat kerajaan tidak mempunyai mentaliti seperti ini. Mereka seharusnya bekerja untuk berbakti kepada negara bukan kerana kepentingan peribadi.
February 16th, 2008 at 8:15 am
Dr Bakri,
It is nice to read your articles. Sometimes it is a breath of fresh air but sometimes it is filled with misconceptions, misunderstanding and misinformation.
I am not trying to defend Sidek or any other civil servant. However I feel that what is now happening is a result of the effective campaign of misinformation and disinformation spread by the government and the ruling party.
For one thing, Pemudah’s ‘terms of reference’ (to use an oft-used lingo among the elite civil service) is just as you described, “Special Task Force to Facilitate Business”. Is is not to streamline the civil service. In fact, to them, it doesn’t matter if there are two or ten agencies performing the same task, as long as the business community (read: foreign investors) is happy. Hence among the improvements you see are mostly along the lines of facilitating these foreign investors and not the local people. If the locals benefit, then good for them, otherwise these people are not the priority, the people with the dollars/yen/euro are.
Why? Because Pemudah’s main goal is to improve Malaysia’s ranking in the World Banks Doing Business report. That’s it. That’s why Ambrin Buang is not in the committee, the report doesn’t ‘rank’ audit reports for public sector agencies. The report just wants to see how fast can a company open, operate and close down a business.
That’s why the majority are from the trade-related agencies like MITI, MIDA, Smidec, Housing and Local Government Ministry, Local Government Department and several other high-ranking civil servants. To help the, they co-opted business people like chamber of commerce presidents and past presidents, FMM president and other so-called industry captains.
Even then, I think Ambrin is not the real hero. He is a PTD, not a trained auditor. The auditors at the auditor general department are. People like his Deputy Auditor General, a trained financial auditor who doesn’t miss any detail in any report, now that’s heroic. Also, it was not him who raised the issue of the London sports complex, it was the two reporters from the The Sun. Since it’s a ministerial-level special project, Ambrin would be foolish to directly comment on it. Especially if the finances are technically in order.
If you go to Sidek’s home page, you will find a bit news about the disciplinary action taken against the civil servants. No names are mentioned though, typical of the Malaysian ‘jaga air muka’ (shame no one) culture. I couldn’t care less about the names, what I care about is making sure the punishments are indeed carried out and the correct person charged, not some scapegoat. To save you the trouble, here’s the link:
http://www.pmo.gov.my/WebNotesApp/KSNMain.nsf/hv_KSNAkhbarKiniView/1F8058A4BF069A10482573940005CB49
Yes, I am a civil servant, I even work at the very agency Esman helped found. To me, the government is not wrong, it’s the people inside it. A world class civil service is useless if it’s hampered by the decisions of selfish and self-serving politicians, who are really the people in power. Why do you think Istana Zakaria is still there?
As the saying goes, politicians come and go, but the government is here to stay. In a few week’s time, you can exercise your right to choose who is in the hot seat. I will making my choice wisely, hopefully all of you will.
Kepada cik henr, purata saya balik tiap-tiap hari ialah pukul 7-8 malam untuk siapkan kerja. Kadang-kadang tak sempat makan lunch atau terpaksa skip dinner kerana terlalu penat untuk bangun makan selepas pulang (saya pastikan saya makan breakfast dulu kerana itulah meal paling penting untuk jaga kesihatan, itupun sebelum mula masuk kerja).
Jika mahukan kerja kerajaan cubalah mohon. Tapi kalau dapat, jangan gatal-gatal nak mintak tukar jabatan pasal tak tahan kerja. Saya pun pernah bekerja swasta, tiada bezanya dari segi berat bebanan kerja. Cuma mungkin gaji dan benefits sahaja lain sedikit. Semoga berjaya.
February 16th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Dear MFZ and others:
Thank you all for your thoughtful comments. And MFZ, yes I read that disciplinary actions taken on the PTD officers. Those were the officers cited in the Auditor-General’s Report, not the errant ones Sidek had identified on his many surprise visits.
Sidek did discipline a few and I have heard from some of them and/or their subordinates. They of course give me a different viewpoint. To them, Sidek was not disciplining errant officers but instead using the occasion to to get even on those who are not particularly attuned to his politics. I am in no position to know who is right except to say that if the disciplinary actions were done without any transparency, then you would create these kinds of accusations.
Case in point is the corruption charge against the senior police officer Ramli. Now that he is charged in open courts and has opted for a trial, we will get to know all the facts. Then we can judge who is the more corrupt: the one charged or those who make the accusations.
To me the current Royal Commission on the Lingam Tape is instructive. Regardless of what the commission’s final report will be (it will be irrelevant anyway), the very fact that we get to hear everyone (well, almost everyone, they were too scared to call Anwar!) we know much more about the rot that is our judiciary.
If Sidek were to publicly reprimand those errant officers, and if those officers felt they were being unfairly singled out, then they could challenge him in an appropriate open forum where we all would get to hear the facts and judge who is telling the truth.
There is much to say about management by walkabout. Read GE’s legendary CEO Jack Welch’s memoir. Whenever he saw a mistake, he would not criticize or discipline whoever was making it, instead he would go after the fellow’s immediate superior and ask him or her why was the mistake not noted earlier and ask what training did that individual who made the mistake had undergone. You can make mistakes, that is not the sin. The sin is when mistakes are the results of improper or inadequate training and/or supervision. In which case then you would go after whoever was in charge. Meaning, it would be the mistake of the supervisor, not the worker.
As for Ambrin Buang not being the hero and that the honor should go to his subordinates, I am sure that in any organization, the head man sets the tone. If Ambrin had been a jerk, he would have discipline or banish to Ulu Sarawak the officer under him who challenged those ministers’ reckless expenditures.
M. Bakri Musa