Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan yes­ter­day an­nounced plans to mod­ernise the Pub­lic Ser­vice to bring it more in line with the needs and de­vel­op­ments of the 21st cen­tu­ry. "This mod­erni­sa­tion jour­ney," she said, "will place spe­cial em­pha­sis on en­sur­ing that the Pub­lic Ser­vice has strength­ened hu­man re­source man­age­ment func­tions that will al­low for a more cit­i­zen-cen­tred and cit­i­zen-fo­cused ap­proach in Gov­ern­ment's dai­ly trans­ac­tions."

The min­is­ter said fo­cus will be on serv­ing cit­i­zens in ways that are most con­ve­nient for them. They will have choic­es about how they re­ceive these ser­vices, as well as ease of ac­cess. Their needs will de­ter­mine the ser­vice de­liv­ery meth­ods, she said.

Com­ment­ing on the mod­erni­sa­tion, Min­is­ter Seep­er­sad-Bachan said in a state­ment: "The cur­rent shape of our Pub­lic Ser­vice is the clas­sic pyra­mid of the British mod­el that we in­her­it­ed. There is a small group of man­agers at the top, a large group of tech­ni­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive staff in the mid­dle and a huge group of cler­i­cal and gen­er­al staff at the bot­tom. It is a sys­tem mired in a hi­er­ar­chy that is un­suit­able for a ser­vice-ori­ent­ed, cit­i­zen-cen­tric so­ci­ety."

Seep­er­sad-Bachan said the re­vamped Pub­lic Ser­vice will re­flect a di­a­mond shape, which will see the broad­en­ing of the mid­dle man­age­ment lev­el and in­cor­po­ra­tion of new pro­fes­sion­al streams, such as project man­age­ment, IT, pro­cure­ment and fa­cil­i­ties man­age­ment in the Pub­lic Ser­vice.

"We have al­ready pre­pared terms of ref­er­ences to in­vite con­sul­tants to help us strength­en the ca­pac­i­ty of the cen­tral hu­man re­source man­age­ment agen­cies of the Pub­lic Ser­vice. These are the Ser­vice Com­mis­sions De­part­ment and the Per­son­nel De­part­ment. We see the roles of these or­gan­i­sa­tions be­ing one of in­creased over­sight and com­pli­ance with re­cruit­ment, se­lec­tion and ap­point­ment process­es so that the re­sult will be greater au­thor­i­ty be­ing del­e­gat­ed to pub­lic ser­vice man­agers."

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, to pre­pare pub­lic of­fi­cers for this tran­si­tion, a Pub­lic Ser­vice Acad­e­my will play a key role to en­hance the readi­ness and ca­pa­bil­i­ties of pub­lic of­fi­cers to meet the needs of this di­a­mond pub­lic ser­vice for ex­cel­lence in ser­vice de­liv­ery. Min­is­ter Seep­er­sad-Bachan em­pha­sised: "If we can get these cen­tral HRM agen­cies right, they, in turn, can en­sure that min­istries are ap­pro­pri­ate­ly staffed to de­liv­er min­is­te­r­i­al ob­jec­tives."

Some of the oth­er ma­jor as­pects of the pub­lic ser­vice mod­erni­sa­tion pro­gramme in­clude analy­sis of the du­ties and func­tions of cur­rent pub­lic ser­vice po­si­tions through a job eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cise; de­vel­op­ment of im­proved com­pen­sa­tion poli­cies and prac­tices that will al­low the ser­vice to at­tract and re­tain in­di­vid­u­als; and, the move­ment to­wards be­ing able to of­fer per­for­mance-based in­cen­tives to of­fi­cers who per­form ex­cep­tion­al­ly well.