A na­tion­al shut­down will not be good for T&T, said Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan. "This will af­fect pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, our own in­vest­ment cli­mate. Di­a­logue is the way for­ward and we need to be talk­ing to re­solve the is­sues. I have had a healthy di­a­logue over the last 12 months with the Oil­field Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU). We had col­lab­o­ra­tion with them in our joint com­mit­tees on the rais­ing of oil pro­duc­tion. That worked very well." She used the ex­am­ple of in­creased oil pro­duc­tion un­der her port­fo­lio as En­er­gy Min­is­ter as an ex­am­ple of how labour and the Gov­ern­ment can work to­geth­er.

"The union con­tin­ues to boast to­day that when we set up those com­mit­tees, they as­sist­ed in oil pro­duc­tion and we boost­ed oil pro­duc­tion in T&T by a fur­ther 3,000 bar­rels a day. That's the on­ly way we were able to get di­a­logue go­ing among OW­TU, the man­age­ment of Petrotrin and the Min­istry of En­er­gy. So we have a win-win sit­u­a­tion and the coun­try can achieve," she told the Busi­ness Guardian in an in­ter­view in her of­fice, Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion, NALIS Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, last week Wednes­day.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan was shift­ed from her Min­istry of En­er­gy port­fo­lio to that of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion as part of a Cab­i­net reshuf­fle in June. Re­it­er­at­ing the po­si­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Seep­er­sad-Bachan said the unions must re­turn to the bar­gain­ing ta­ble. "The Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) ne­go­ti­ates on be­half of the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the Gov­ern­ment. You al­so have the state en­ter­pris­es, which the CPO has no au­thor­i­ty over. This is why we have said the var­i­ous unions and state en­ti­ties should go back to the ta­ble and par­tic­i­pate in the free col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing process. "The boards elect­ed will set their man­date in ac­cor­dance with the abil­i­ty and ca­pac­i­ty of that state en­ter­prise. In the same way the CPO sets man­date for the civ­il ser­vice, the state en­ter­pris­es are set­ting that man­date through the board of di­rec­tors," she said. "T&T's econ­o­my is not iso­lat­ed from the glob­al econ­o­my and the unions should re­alise this, she said.

"Many peo­ple see what is hap­pen­ing to the glob­al econ­o­my and T&T will be im­pact­ed, the unions must take it in­to con­text." Par­tic­i­pants in the in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions sys­tem in T&T must look at new ways of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing, Seep­er­sad-Bachan said. "Go­ing for­ward, we must have a re­think of how we de­sign our com­pen­sa­tion and re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­ages to en­sure where there's pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and progress and where there are sig­nif­i­cant changes peo­ple can be re­ward­ed." T&T must al­so adopt glob­al trends. "There is a move­ment from mon­e­tary ben­e­fits to oth­er ben­e­fits. That is hap­pen­ing glob­al­ly and, here in T&T, it is be­gin­ning to hap­pen. We saw al­lowances with PSA in this round of the ne­go­ti­a­tion. For fu­ture ne­go­ti­a­tions, I hope we can re-de­sign our pack­ages to re­ward per­for­mance and re­turns on in­vest­ments. There's a move away from non-mon­e­tary ben­e­fits."

PSA and job eval­u­a­tion

Seep­er­sad-Bachan wants the Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) as a part­ner in cre­at­ing a more ef­fi­cient Pub­lic Ser­vice. "The union is very im­por­tant in talk­ing about mod­erni­sa­tion of the Pub­lic Ser­vice. The union must be on board. I have been in con­tact with the PSA pres­i­dent a cou­ple times. We will have a meet­ing to dis­cuss the job eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cise and a more de­tailed dis­cus­sion on the whole mod­erni­sa­tion ex­er­cise." Sev­er­al top­ics will be cov­ered in Seep­er­sad-Bachan's meet­ing with the PSA.

"We al­so want to dis­cuss as­pects of the green pa­per with him (PSA pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke).

"The pa­per deals with the lead­er­ship of the Pub­lic Ser­vice, ICT, hu­man re­source man­age­ment, process re-en­gi­neer­ing and so. We have to de­vel­op de­tailed ac­tion plan on it." The new job eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cise to be con­duct­ed soon with­in the Pub­lic Ser­vice will as­sist in build­ing a changed sec­tor Seep­er­sad-Bachan en­vi­sions."Do we need a new ar­chi­tec­ture, a dif­fer­ent set of job ti­tles, new job specs? The job eval­u­a­tion out of the agree­ment with the PSA fits in­to this, as we have been try­ing to tweak that job eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cise, so it will con­tribute to that new ar­chi­tec­ture we want."

A cus­tomer-friend­ly Pub­lic Ser­vice?

Seep­er­sad-Bachan wants to see the en­tire Pub­lic Ser­vice trans­formed in­to an ef­fi­cient cus­tomer-friend­ly body and in­tends to use her min­istry to achieve this. "The trans­for­ma­tion of the Pub­lic Ser­vice has been some­thing that has been spo­ken about from past ad­min­is­tra­tions. For some rea­son, it has been dif­fi­cult to get trans­for­ma­tion ex­er­cis­es go­ing," she said. She said the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion will be in charge of spear­head­ing this change. "A lot of it has to do with a big pub­lic ser­vice. It takes a lot of co-or­di­na­tion and thought. Our min­istry is not the on­ly one re­spon­si­ble; we will be the agency for the ex­e­cu­tion and to co-or­di­nate the trans­for­ma­tion ex­er­cise." She de­scribed the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion as the min­istry that deals with the hu­man re­source man­age­ment of the Pub­lic Ser­vice.

"There are 16,000 em­ploy­ees here, but the role of this min­istry is re­al­ly more co-or­di­nat­ing. The ser­vice com­mis­sions fall un­der us: the Po­lice Ser­vice, the Teach­ing Ser­vice, the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer's (CPO) of­fice and so on."

Tech­nol­o­gy, in­te­gra­tion

Seep­er­sad-Bachan point­ed out that al­though tech­nol­o­gy has been used in the Pub­lic Ser­vice, in re­cent years it has not brought the type of im­prove­ment in ef­fi­cien­cy as ex­pect­ed. "Any time we look at tech­nol­o­gy, we think it's the so­lu­tion, but that is not al­ways the so­lu­tion. In­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) in gov­ern­ment has un­der-de­liv­ered. The re­turn on in­vest­ment has been very low. Over $1 bil­lion has been spent over last two or three years on ICT in the Pub­lic Ser­vice.

"It has not been de­liv­ered be­cause the tra­di­tion­al way is we take it and su­per­im­pose it on ex­ist­ing process­es and pro­ce­dures. We nev­er re­alised that we have to re-en­gi­neer those process­es to ex­ploit the true po­ten­tial of the ICT." Seep­er­sad-Bachan wants gov­ern­ment of­fices to be­come a one-stop shop for what­ev­er ser­vices the pub­lic wish­es to ac­cess.

"I want to ap­ply for a hous­ing grant, but the per­son takes it, puts in on­line, but still has to send the name to the Min­istry of Hous­ing to get that. That's not how its sup­posed to be. Once I have the TTCon­nect ser­vice, whether it's in Moru­ga, I should be able to get it right there. I should be able to re­ceive the hous­ing grant at that point and not else­where. Prob­lem with TTCon­nect is they have that in­ter­face start­ed up, but are not able to com­plete the links in start­ing up ser­vice." Hav­ing many gov­ern­ment of­fices in one build­ing does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean more ef­fi­cien­cy, she said. "The Tu­na­puna Ad­min­is­tra­tive Com­plex has all these ser­vices avail­able in them, such as the cour­t­house and oth­er things, but that's not the one-stop shop I'm re­fer­ring to. What I mean is I can stand in a line and go to a counter and let that one per­son of­fer me all ser­vices." The min­is­ter vowed to re­form the Pub­lic Ser­vice in the "short­est pos­si­ble time." "That's why I'm hav­ing a strate­gic plan­ning ex­er­cise to­day to find out what are re­al­ly the ob­sta­cles in the de­liv­ery of these ser­vices. Is it a re­design and re­think of the Pub­lic Ser­vice we need?"

She ad­mits that chang­ing the cul­ture of the Pub­lic Ser­vice will take time. "I don't think we can leg­is­late cul­ture and be­hav­iour, those are val­ue sys­tems. Those are things we have to do through a whole change man­age­ment process to change the cul­ture. "I would say the ma­jor­i­ty of pub­lic ser­vants want to be pro­fes­sion­al. I don't see in­cul­cat­ing pro­fes­sion­al­ism in­to the Pub­lic Ser­vice as be­ing a chal­lenge, but we must cre­ate the right en­vi­ron­ment for the Pub­lic Ser­vice to be­come pro­fes­sion­al. Even the gov­ern­ment build­ings must be re­designed to en­sure that a cul­ture of pro­fes­sion­al­ism is en­gen­dered."