Recent comments by Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley highlight the extent to which, well into the second decade of the 21st century, this country has failed to develop a modern, efficient public service.
Dr Rowley’s concerns about archaic systems that hinder efforts to get the best people into senior public sector positions are valid. However, it cannot be that he has had a sudden epiphany about what ails the public service as he was part of past administrations that talked a lot about reform and produced reams of reports and recommendations that are collecting dust and cobwebs somewhere.
As a result of all those failed attempts at reform, this country is saddled with a 60,000-strong workforce that is under no compulsion to deliver services to citizens with accountability or efficiency.
For as long as T&T has been an independent nation there has been a need to improve the operations of the public service as well as the quality of service provided by public servants. But most governments, regardless of their political persuasion, failed to go beyond paying lip service to the ideals of public service reform.
To make matters worse, in recent years there has been the practice of installing political appointees in key managerial and specialist positions and bypassing established human resource practices to hire these hand-picked employees on contract.
All is not lost, however, as the Rowley administration, like the People’s Partnership government that preceded it, has included among its Cabinet positions a public administration minister who is supposed to be driving efforts toward a modern, innovative public sector.
And it was during the first Patrick Manning administration in 1991 that the country first got a minister whose specific responsibility was the public service. Gordon Draper brought to that portfolio extensive qualifications in public management as well as some experience as a consultant involved in studies of the public sector.
Eventually, he had to admit that “reform reports seem to have an uncanny way of repeating themselves” as he encountered some challenges that repeatedly surfaced and resurfaced.
Later, another consultant, Prof John La Guerre, identified significant hurdles to reform efforts, including lack of “strong and continual political support,” a fragmented, ad hoc approach and failure to get public servants and their representative unions involved in the process.
This country’s sad history of aborted and abandoned attempts at reform and unfavourable perceptions of the public service and the quality of the services it provides can only be changed if serious efforts are made at transformation.
To keep pace with global developments and fulfil its mandate, the role of the public service must be expanded, particularly the capacity to innovate and evolve.
With this latest signal from Dr Rowley that reform might be high on the government’s agenda, the nation now looks for signs that they can succeed where past administrations have failed with a strong and sustained effort to transform the public service.
They can start by producing a strategic approach with clear goals and objectives to inform and guide the reform that is now long overdue.
