He­len Dray­ton

If any­thing, re­ac­tion to the pro­posed gov­ern­ment salary in­creas­es has pro­vid­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties that will serve the pub­lic in­ter­est. We are in tur­bu­lent times, char­ac­terised by high crime and pub­lic scep­ti­cism about the au­thor­i­ties’ abil­i­ty to stem the rough tide. Cit­i­zens are seek­ing firm di­rec­tion—where are we go­ing as a coun­try? What val­ues do we want to em­brace to build an ef­fi­cient pub­lic ser­vice?

With un­prece­dent­ed dan­gers and prob­lems come un­par­al­leled op­por­tu­ni­ties. The Gov­ern­ment has an ex­cel­lent op­por­tu­ni­ty to seize this mo­ment to change out­dat­ed struc­tures and pri­ori­tise pub­lic ser­vice re­form. It is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to es­tab­lish pro­gres­sive com­pen­sa­tion that will at­tract and re­tain skilled and well-trained pro­fes­sion­als and in­no­va­tors who will en­gi­neer the trans­for­ma­tion of the ser­vice and de­vel­op­ment.

We are deal­ing with a trou­bling crime sit­u­a­tion. The DPP’s of­fice must be strong. The ju­di­cial bench must be ex­pand­ed and strength­ened; this is in the ju­di­cial sys­tem’s in­ter­est. We must at­tract the best le­gal minds to our Ju­di­cia­ry and the Bar. In­stead, we are los­ing judges and lawyers to oth­er com­mon­wealth coun­tries. Af­ter we have in­vest­ed so much in their de­vel­op­ment, we can­not af­ford to lose the best and the bright­est, and if we are to cre­ate ef­fi­cient in­sti­tu­tions, we must act to en­sure that com­pen­sa­tion is com­pet­i­tive not on­ly in the ju­di­cial sec­tor but al­so in the wider ser­vice.

To be clear, I am not against im­ple­ment­ing jus­ti­fi­able salary in­creas­es for gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. How­ev­er, there are fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of fair­ness and al­so job eval­u­a­tion is­sues that the Cab­i­net should in­ves­ti­gate. Oth­er­wise, it sends a mes­sage that re­gard­less of ev­i­dent in­con­sis­ten­cies and dis­tor­tions, it is du­ty-bound to ac­cept the rec­om­men­da­tions be­cause the SRC is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly the “in­de­pen­dent” body man­dat­ed to re­view pub­lic of­fi­cials’ salaries. Those dis­tor­tions, over­sights, and in­con­sis­ten­cies are not en­tire­ly be­cause of the SRC’s de­ci­sions but pri­mar­i­ly be­cause of the pub­lic ser­vice struc­ture and the ap­par­ent void of ef­fi­cient strate­gic hu­man re­source man­age­ment.

Why did the SRC give a “pro­fes­sion­al al­lowance” to the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) and not to oth­er pro­fes­sion­als and per­ma­nent sec­re­taries? The rea­son might be valid, but shouldn’t there be trans­paren­cy? More­over, the CPO is the sec­re­tari­at of the SRC.

Re­gard­ing eq­ui­ty and val­ue, why does an en­try-lev­el per­ma­nent sec­re­tary get the same com­pen­sa­tion as those with sev­er­al years of pro­gres­sive learn­ing and knowl­edge, sol­id ex­pe­ri­ence, growth in the job, and pre­sum­ably sat­is­fac­to­ry per­for­mance? Shouldn’t min­i­mum and max­i­mum salary bands ex­ist for these and oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tive po­si­tions for fair­ness and ob­jec­tiv­i­ty in com­pen­sat­ing en­try-lev­el of­fi­cers?

If there was con­sul­ta­tion with sub­ject mat­ter ex­perts, what caused the SRC to down­grade a Mas­ter of the Court to a Deputy Reg­is­trar? The Mas­ter of the Court is a po­si­tion of con­sid­er­able im­por­tance to the new Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Law and to the Fam­i­ly and Chil­dren Courts, which han­dle do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, child abuse and traf­fick­ing.

The Mis­cel­la­neous Amend­ments (No 2) Act 2020 at sec­tion 7(b) makes the po­si­tions of Reg­is­trar of the Supreme Court, the Court’s Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Ad­min­is­tra­tor, the Chief Mag­is­trate, the Mas­ters Chief Ju­di­cial Of­fi­cers, and the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al equiv­a­lent to Chief Le­gal Of­fi­cers. Was the 2020 act vi­o­lat­ed?

The re­port ad­dress­es the terms of ser­vice for Ser­vice Com­mis­sions but not the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. Why? Why were all the Chief State So­lic­i­tor po­si­tions down­grad­ed? Why was the As­sis­tant DPP job down­grad­ed to be­low that of an As­sis­tant State Coun­sel? Why were the le­gal po­si­tions in the Chief State So­lic­i­tor de­part­ment down­grad­ed? Are those down­grades jus­ti­fied and pru­dent in a time of high crime and dif­fi­cul­ty find­ing suit­able tal­ent? Job eval­u­a­tion is a con­tex­tu­al process, so the en­vi­ron­ment is a valid con­sid­er­a­tion.

Should se­nior posts in the ju­di­cial sec­tor, a sep­a­rate branch of the State, be eval­u­at­ed on the same ba­sis as those in oth­er arms of the State when there are fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ences in core re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, unique­ness, and the na­ture and di­ver­si­ty of dis­ci­plines? There’s bound to be dis­tor­tion. Is the cur­rent method of job eval­u­a­tion suit­able for eval­u­at­ing ju­di­cial posts?

Do the con­sti­tu­tion­al man­dates of the SRC and the CPO pre­vent ini­tia­tive and in­no­va­tion? As men­tioned, job eval­u­a­tion is con­tex­tu­al. So, an­oth­er ques­tion is, has thought been giv­en to the re­al­i­ty of the func­tions of the Min­is­ters of Fi­nance, En­er­gy, and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al? Shouldn’t an eq­ui­table dis­tinc­tion in to­tal com­pen­sa­tion ex­ist be­tween those jobs and oth­er min­is­te­r­i­al jobs, eg Sport, Cul­ture, etc?

Re­search in­di­cates that min­is­te­r­i­al salary dis­tinc­tions are not nor­mal in most oth­er coun­tries. Still, these three min­is­te­r­i­al posts are far more com­plex in na­ture and mag­ni­tude and have a much greater im­pact than oth­er min­is­te­r­i­al po­si­tions, es­pe­cial­ly on a small twin is­land. The pol­i­cy­mak­ing, risks, skillsets, knowl­edge, and ex­per­tise are in­com­pa­ra­ble. We don’t al­ways have to fol­low the crowd. Where’s the ini­tia­tive in com­pen­sa­tion pol­i­cy de­vel­op­ment?

The CPO and the SRC need to up­grade their knowl­edge of the ju­di­cial sec­tor and shift the bound­aries of their rea­son­ing. The Cab­i­net must awak­en. The lack of in­no­v­a­tive think­ing in strate­gic HRM is ev­i­dent, af­fect­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and ser­vice de­liv­ery. How does an in­sti­tu­tion ef­fec­tive­ly eval­u­ate jobs with­out ad­e­quate per­for­mance man­age­ment, re­cruit­ment, and suc­ces­sion plan­ning sys­tems? Who is ac­count­able for the strate­gic lead­er­ship of the pub­lic ser­vice? Who is mon­i­tor­ing per­for­mance at the top and ad­dress­ing de­fi­cien­cies? Is it the head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice? Who is re­spon­si­ble for dri­ving strate­gic HR? The CPO has be­come a Cen­tral Hu­man Re­source Man­age­ment Agency re­spon­si­ble for Hu­man Re­source pol­i­cy, plan­ning and re­search. Where are the en­light­ened poli­cies?

It is ev­i­dent from all re­ports that cit­i­zens dis­ap­prove of the Cab­i­net’s greater-than-thou-art at­ti­tude to­ward pub­lic sec­tor work­ers. The pub­lic back­lash is healthy. Cit­i­zens are the em­ploy­ers and pay­mas­ters of elect­ed of­fi­cials who should be held ac­count­able for fail­ing in one way or an­oth­er, es­pe­cial­ly in the ab­sence of for­mal ac­count­abil­i­ty sys­tems.

While job eval­u­a­tion re­sults typ­i­cal­ly gen­er­ate dis­agree­ments, as every em­ploy­ee feels their job should be rat­ed high­er, in this case, there are valid ques­tions to be an­swered and rea­sons to re­flect on be­fore im­ple­men­ta­tion of the rec­om­men­da­tions.

Fair­ness and re­spect not cul­ti­vat­ed can­not be har­vest­ed.