The nat­ur­al ten­sion be­tween the Pub­lic Ser­vice and the elect­ed Gov­ern­ment was a qui­et un­der­pin­ning of the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee meet­ing in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day as the Chair­man of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC), Christo­pher Thomas, faced the com­mit­tee.At the core of that dis­cus­sion was the mat­ter of as­sess­ing the per­for­mance of per­ma­nent sec­re­taries in Min­istries.The Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion lament­ed the lack of a struc­tured method for an in­de­pen­dent and ac­cu­rate re­view of the per­for­mance of the per­ma­nent sec­re­taries while Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters Chan­dresh Shar­ma and Therese Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis be­moaned the in­ef­fi­cien­cies of the PSC and at­tempt­ed to dis­miss the as­ser­tion that Min­is­ters should not be part of the re­view of the per­for­mance of the per­ma­nent sec­re­taries.

Cor­nelis-Bap­tiste ar­gued em­phat­i­cal­ly that any "360 de­gree feed­back mech­a­nism" should in­clude the in­put of the Min­is­ter of Gov­ern­ment who works with a par­tic­u­lar per­ma­nent sec­re­tary.This runs counter to the pre­vail­ing wis­dom, which erects a clear but of­ten per­me­able Chi­nese wall be­tween the work of elect­ed Min­is­ters, who di­rect the ef­forts of their sec­tor of gov­er­nance, and the work of per­ma­nent sec­re­taries, who man­age the op­er­a­tions of the Min­istries, which are part of the pub­lic ser­vice in­fra­struc­ture. These ten­sions flared in Jan­u­ary, when the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced that the Prime Min­is­ter would be "reshuf­fling Per­ma­nent Sec­re­taries."That un­usu­al state­ment came less than a year af­ter the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment had been elect­ed to of­fice.

It is the Prime Min­is­ter's per­og­a­tive to re­as­sign Per­ma­nent Sec­re­taries and it's a process that has been a part of the gov­er­nance process giv­en the in­evitable clash­es of style and per­son­al­i­ty that ac­com­pa­ny the ap­point­ment of new politi­cians to their min­istries.What's dif­fer­ent about the sit­u­a­tion to­day is the no­table lack of a per­ma­nent sec­re­tary ap­point­ed to the Prime Min­is­ter, a po­si­tion that is au­to­mat­i­cal­ly des­ig­nat­ed as the Head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice and the se­nior man­ag­er of the pub­lic ser­vice re­sources tasked with ex­e­cut­ing the strate­gies ar­tic­u­lat­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter and Cab­i­net.

In the wake of the talk of the reshuf­fle an­nounce­ments, it would fall to the Prime Min­is­ter, in a pat­tern that's be­come part of the new gov­ern­ment's style of cri­sis man­age­ment, to set­tle the nerves of per­ma­nent sec­re­taries in a sub­se­quent meet­ing and to reaf­firm the gov­ern­ment's in­tent to work with the pub­lic ser­vice for the com­mon, na­tion­al good.

That this should have been nec­es­sary at all speaks di­rect­ly to the need for the long over­due ap­point­ment of a per­ma­nent sec­re­tary to the Prime Min­is­ter, a post that has been va­cant since the pre­vi­ous in­cum­bent re­tired in Sep­tem­ber 2010. The lack of a clear sys­tem of as­sess­ment and ac­count­abil­i­ty to ex­pec­ta­tions for per­ma­nent sec­re­taries is hard­ly the re­sult of an ab­sen­tee Head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice, but this crit­i­cal void in the pub­lic sec­tor ad­min­is­tra­tive hi­er­ar­chy is clear­ly im­pact­ing the ca­pac­i­ty of the PSC to dri­ve the kind of process and pro­ce­dure changes it seems en­thu­si­as­tic to get un­der­way.

It is sim­ply not enough for Min­is­ters Shar­ma and Cor­nelis-Bap­tiste to ex­press an­noy­ance with per­cep­tions of de­lays in the pub­lic ser­vice, an­oth­er ten­sion be­tween min­is­ters and their min­istries that's al­so a nat­ur­al part of their some­times con­flict­ing mis­sions, which find min­is­ters look­ing for quick, pub­lic­i­ty-fo­cused wins and min­istries worth their salt de­ter­mined to en­sure that the pro­ce­dures of good gov­er­nance are fol­lowed.

In the draft con­sti­tu­tion be­ing cham­pi­oned by Patrick Man­ning in 2009, a fun­da­men­tal re­cast­ing of the role of the pub­lic ser­vice was en­vi­sioned, but it re­mains to be proven that the ex­ist­ing sys­tem, run ef­fi­cient­ly and with prop­er man­age­ment, doesn't work in the best in­ter­ests of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In­deed, it was in sit­u­a­tions when the for­mer gov­ern­ment, keen to dri­ve its in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment, stepped out­side this process of care­ful if painful­ly mea­sured ad­min­is­tra­tion, that the worst ex­cess­es of Ude­cott be­came pos­si­ble.The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment should in­vest more ef­fort in mak­ing the pub­lic ser­vice work ef­fi­cient­ly and be­gin that process by ap­point­ing a Head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice with ap­pro­pri­ate dis­patch.