The warn­ings of Regi­nald Du­mas, re­tired head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice, ex­press­ing con­cern about in­ef­fi­cien­cies with­in the ad­min­is­tra­tive arm of the Gov­ern­ment should en­cour­age at­ten­tion and per­haps some tan­gi­ble ac­tion on the qual­i­ty of man­age­ment there.

The Gov­ern­ment, through the Pub­lic Ser­vice, is the largest em­ploy­er in the coun­try, but sys­tems and man­age­ment process­es with­in its vast bu­reau­cra­cy have not kept pace with stan­dards for en­ter­pris­es op­er­at­ing on that scale. While the Pub­lic Ser­vice is not a sin­gle or­gan­i­sa­tion, there are enough com­mon­al­i­ties and link­ages be­tween all the arms of pub­lic sec­tor gov­er­nance that it should be able to lever­age its scale of op­er­a­tions and re­sources bet­ter than it has.

Ear­li­er in the decade there were ef­forts at in­sti­tut­ing best prac­tices in man­age­ment prin­ci­ples with­in the Pub­lic Ser­vice but that ini­tia­tive with­ered with the change in gov­ern­ment three years ago.On May 14, speak­ing at a Cham­ber of Com­merce Ex­po, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan an­nounced the start of a new ef­fort at trans­form­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Pub­lic Ser­vice, promis­ing that 12 pi­lot projects would be launched in June.

This is a crit­i­cal time for the Pub­lic Ser­vice as it be­gins the process of ad­just­ing to an in­flux of 6,500 re­cruits, one tenth of the over­all strength of the sec­tor's em­ploy­ee pop­u­la­tion. There are still 2,500 va­can­cies in the ser­vice wait­ing to be filled.The pub­lic sec­tor is pin­cered be­tween hav­ing large num­bers of new em­ploy­ees and work­ing to change the work habits of ca­reer pub­lic ser­vants, not all of whom wish to change the sta­tus quo.

In Feb­ru­ary 2011, ad­dress­ing the Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee, San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion trea­sur­er Ranu Seu­dat lament­ed in­di­vid­u­als in se­nior po­si­tions in the Pub­lic Ser­vice who had been ap­point­ed on se­nior­i­ty, not skill."They don't know what they are do­ing," Ms Seu­dat said.

Add to this mix Mr Du­mas' con­cerns about min­is­ters boast­ing of their skills at mi­cro­manag­ing their sec­tors in­to ac­tion, a sit­u­a­tion that runs counter to the prin­ci­ples of the Pub­lic Ser­vice, which is con­sti­tut­ed to man­age and ex­e­cute the minu­ti­ae of Gov­ern­ment's strate­gic di­rec­tives.

In far too many cas­es in which peo­ple who are not pub­lic ser­vants get in­volved in ad­min­is­tra­tive mat­ters, ques­tions about trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty have tend­ed to arise and op­er­a­tional short­cuts have of­fered too many op­por­tu­ni­ties for self-in­ter­est to trump prop­er pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures.

One no­table ex­pres­sion of this need to in­ter­vene in pub­lic sec­tor gov­er­nance is the ten­den­cy of min­is­ters to be­come in­volved in the op­er­a­tions of state boards. Is this an er­ror of pro­ce­dure on the part of a new gov­ern­ment's min­is­ters or, with a stag­ger­ing 150 state boards cur­rent­ly ap­point­ed, a way of cre­at­ing a par­al­lel and more mal­leable al­ter­na­tive to pub­lic sec­tor bu­reau­cra­cy?

The un­will­ing­ness of the Gov­ern­ment, and its pre­de­ces­sor, to press for prop­er pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures and more trans­par­ent bid­ding process­es on­ly serves to re­in­force the per­cep­tion that the sys­tems of the pub­lic ser­vice, de­signed to safe­guard the trea­sury, are some­thing to be cir­cum­vent­ed, ig­nored or frus­trat­ed rather than lu­bri­cat­ed through a com­mit­ment to greater man­age­ment ca­pac­i­ty and op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cies.