While the civ­il ser­vice is not a mo­tor ve­hi­cle its con­stituent parts must work to­geth­er if it is to de­liv­er the ser­vices re­quired to keep civ­il so­ci­ety func­tion­al and to im­ple­ment de­vel­op­ment poli­cies.

The le­gal and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work that guides the func­tion­ing of the civ­il ser­vice is pro­vid­ed by the Civ­il Ser­vice Act. Part 1 is de­f­i­n­i­tion­al. Part 2 sets out the es­tab­lish­ment and struc­ture of the civ­il ser­vice.

Part 3 es­tab­lish­es the Per­son­nel De­part­ment un­der the gen­er­al di­rec­tion and con­trol of “the Min­is­ter to whom is as­signed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the ad­min­is­tra­tion of that De­part­ment”, present­ly, the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion. Part 4 es­tab­lish­es the Spe­cial Tri­bunal which is to ar­bi­trate where ne­go­ti­a­tions with the As­so­ci­a­tion are dead­locked. Part 5 pro­vides for an as­so­ci­a­tion or bar­gain­ing unit to rep­re­sent the in­ter­ests of the civ­il ser­vice. Part 6 is a gen­er­al sec­tion giv­ing the min­is­ter pow­er to make reg­u­la­tions to op­er­a­tionalise the pro­vi­sions of the Act.

The Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) is es­tab­lished and gov­erned by Sec­tions 120, 121, 126 and 129 of the 1976 Con­sti­tu­tion and guides the op­er­a­tion of the civ­il ser­vice. For op­er­a­tional con­trol pur­pos­es, some of the pow­ers/func­tions of the PSC are del­e­gat­ed to Per­ma­nent Sec­re­taries/Heads of De­part­ments, and oth­er se­nior of­fi­cials by Le­gal No­tice No. 105 of 2006. S66B re­quires the PSC (and oth­er ser­vice com­mis­sions) to re­port on the ex­er­cise of its pow­ers and func­tions an­nu­al­ly to the Pres­i­dent who shall cause these re­ports to be pre­sent­ed to Par­lia­ment.

The pow­ers of the ex­ec­u­tive are set out in part 5 of the Con­sti­tu­tion. Sec­tion 85 of the Con­sti­tu­tion dis­tin­guish­es be­tween the role of the civ­il ser­vant and the min­is­ter. The min­is­ter has “gen­er­al di­rec­tion and con­trol” and, “sub­ject to such di­rec­tion and con­trol, the de­part­ment shall be un­der the su­per­vi­sion of a Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary.” Whilst the PSC con­trols and ap­proves staff ap­point­ments, its agen­da is man­aged by the sec­re­tari­at which ser­vices its statu­to­ry func­tions. The Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion (es­tab­lished pur­suant to S13 of the Civ­il Ser­vice Act) con­trols the sec­re­tari­at (the Ser­vice Com­mis­sions De­part­ment).

The lan­guage of S85 (gen­er­al di­rec­tion and con­trol) sug­gests that min­is­ters have man­age­r­i­al con­trol over the de­ploy­ment of the min­istry’s re­sources, in prac­ti­cal terms that pow­er re­sides in the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary who signs cheques, and moves staff and oth­er re­sources around. How can the min­is­ter “di­rect” a Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary if the re­al pow­er lies in the hands of the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary?

Fur­ther, how are Cab­i­net’s ob­jec­tives (e.g., Vi­sion 2030) to be co­or­di­nat­ed? The se­nior Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, the “head of the pub­lic ser­vice,” must fi­nesse poli­cies and staffing, The Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in­vari­ably per­forms this role in T&T and man­ages the Cab­i­net sec­re­tari­at but does not at­tend Cab­i­net meet­ings.

In Eng­land and in oth­er Com­mon­wealth ju­ris­dic­tions, the Cab­i­net Sec­re­tary is the most se­nior pub­lic ser­vant and at­tends Cab­i­net meet­ings. This per­son al­so has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for se­nior civ­il ser­vice ap­point­ments and there­fore has re­al (not cer­e­mo­ni­al) pow­er. In T&T ap­point­ments are man­aged by the PSC, a body com­pro­mised of in­de­pen­dent per­sons ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent. Yet the Pres­i­dent has nei­ther the pow­er nor the au­thor­i­ty to di­rect com­mis­sion­ers in how they per­form their func­tions, nor dis­cre­tion in the re­moval of Com­mis­sion­ers. But the agen­da for the com­mis­sion­ers is set by the Di­rec­tor of Per­son­nel Ad­min­is­tra­tion (es­tab­lished pur­suant to S13 of the Civ­il Ser­vice Act) and the Ser­vice Com­mis­sion staff.

This is a com­pli­cat­ed ar­chi­tec­ture of in­di­rect con­trol mech­a­nisms, a “bad busi­ness mod­el.” A fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple of ef­fec­tive and ef­fi­cient man­age­ment is a hi­er­ar­chi­cal chain of com­mand with well-de­vel­oped re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty mech­a­nisms. If a man­ag­er is meant to achieve and be ac­count­able for an ob­jec­tive, he must be giv­en the re­sources re­quired to com­plete the job and be ac­count­able for their ef­fi­cient de­ploy­ment.

This pos­si­bil­i­ty ap­pears re­mote in the struc­ture de­scribed above. The Prime Min­is­ter is meant to su­per­vise min­is­ters and en­sure they and the min­istries they man­age meet the nor­mal op­er­a­tional tar­gets as well as pro­vide an im­pe­tus to the at­tain­ment of wider de­vel­op­ment ob­jec­tives. This means that they must en­gage their per­ma­nent sec­re­taries to dri­ve the process even if min­is­ters can­not hire or fire.

The prob­lem is that the levers of con­trol are in­di­rect and not geared to per­for­mance man­age­ment. As not­ed by the Chair­man of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion in the 2020 An­nu­al Re­port “the Pub­lic Ser­vice re­flects the state of the na­tion, and no na­tion has been able to ad­vance be­yond its Pub­lic Ser­vice.”