Mar­i­ano Browne

Or­gan­i­sa­tions ex­ist to serve a pur­pose or need. When that need ceas­es or is not be­ing met, the very ex­is­tence of that or­gan­i­sa­tion is called in­to ques­tion. All or­gan­i­sa­tions must there­fore adapt to a chang­ing en­vi­ron­ment, or they will be­come dys­func­tion­al. That has been the biggest chal­lenge fac­ing the Civ­il Ser­vice since it came in­to be­ing at in­de­pen­dence.

The needs of a new in­de­pen­dent and grow­ing coun­try are quite dif­fer­ent from that of a colo­nial en­ti­ty re­port­ing to the for­eign of­fice. Whilst there has been some change, that change has not gone far enough. Worse, the world has be­come more com­pli­cat­ed, volatile, am­bigu­ous and un­cer­tain, mak­ing the pace of change faster and the need for more ef­fec­tive re­spons­es. In prac­ti­cal terms, or­gan­i­sa­tions must evolve or adapt in re­sponse to chang­ing needs and cir­cum­stances. This means that the peo­ple, process­es, sys­tems, and in­ter­nal en­vi­ron­ment must be con­stant­ly mod­ernised to re­main in tune with or adapt to the ex­ter­nal en­vi­ron­ment. That means that the sys­tems and the skill sets of the peo­ple who op­er­ate the sys­tem must be con­stant­ly up­grad­ed. In­deed, no coun­try will de­vel­op faster than the ca­pac­i­ty of its Civ­il Ser­vice as that is the rud­der which keeps a coun­try on an even keel or an up­ward tra­jec­to­ry.

The re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the func­tion­ing of the Civ­il Ser­vice and the frame­work in which it op­er­ates falls with­in the purview of gov­ern­ment and par­lia­men­tar­i­ans. The re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for hav­ing an ef­fi­cient, ef­fec­tive and per­for­mance-dri­ven Civ­il Ser­vice/or­gan­i­sa­tions, de­part­ments, or min­istries falls on the shoul­ders of those who man­age the peo­ple who pop­u­late these or­gan­i­sa­tions. They in turn can on­ly func­tion in ac­cor­dance with the sys­tems and process­es that ex­ist. And all these must work seam­less­ly. This means that the man­agers must su­per­vise and di­rect staff to achieve an ac­cept­able lev­el of ser­vice. This is the hu­man fac­tor. 

The pub­lic faces the front end or cus­tomer ser­vice ar­eas and does not see the back end of the op­er­a­tions pre­sum­ing, as they should, that all is well. If the process­es are faulty or in­ad­e­quate­ly aligned, it is re­flect­ed in the ser­vice that the pub­lic re­ceives. That is the pub­lic’s yard­stick. It is dif­fi­cult to deal with the per­for­mance of the en­tire Civ­il Ser­vice in such a short ar­ti­cle as this. There­fore, one can on­ly use some ex­am­ples to il­lus­trate the com­plex­i­ties.

The con­fu­sion that cur­rent­ly ex­ists in the li­cens­ing de­part­ment is an ex­am­ple. It is ac­cept­ed that ve­hi­cles must be reg­is­tered and in­spect­ed. It is not clear that all ve­hi­cles must be in­spect­ed by a com­mon dead­line. This serves on­ly to cre­ate bot­tle­necks. Nor should they all be in­spect­ed at a few con­cen­trat­ed points con­trolled by the Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er. A dis­trib­uted sys­tem of op­er­a­tors li­cenced by the Trans­port Min­istry would re­move the con­ges­tion that now ex­ists. Some progress has been made in this di­rec­tion, but not enough. But gov­ern­ment sys­tems are al­so in­ter­con­nect­ed, and dys­func­tion­al­i­ty can ex­ist be­tween de­part­ments.

The prob­lem in the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s of­fice is not a miss­ing file but a fail­ure of in­ter-de­part­ment com­mu­ni­ca­tion and weak process­es. Lit­tle fo­cus has been placed on the wider sys­temic is­sues of weak in­ter­nal con­trols at the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al’s de­part­ment, lack of in­ter­con­nec­tiv­i­ty be­tween the key de­part­ments in the AG’s min­istry and with­in the var­i­ous de­part­ments it­self, poor record keep­ing and time man­age­ment, in­ad­e­quate se­cu­ri­ty of doc­u­men­ta­tion, poor re­port­ing and weak man­age­ment, com­mu­ni­ca­tion fail­ings, fail­ure to fol­low process and pro­to­cols, in­ef­fi­cien­cies, lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty and ques­tions as to the ap­proval thresh­olds for the set­tle­ment of mat­ters. 

The de­fault judg­ment in the Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man case is not unique as there have been many de­fault judg­ments over the years, some amount­ing to hun­dreds of mil­lions. It could be ar­gued that this is hu­man er­ror. But if hu­man er­ror is a reg­u­lar fea­ture that goes un­cor­rect­ed then the is­sue is sys­temic. Sim­i­lar­ly, the an­nu­al Au­di­tor Gen­er­al re­ports rou­tine­ly iden­ti­fy re­peat er­rors which go un­cor­rect­ed from year to year. But these ex­am­ples are sim­ply the more ob­vi­ous sys­tem chal­lenges that oc­cur in an or­gan­i­sa­tion’s life. What they demon­strate is that the ca­pa­bil­i­ties built to func­tion in a slow­er-paced world are in­ad­e­quate in a more com­plex, in­ter­con­nect­ed and con­gest­ed world. The “right” com­bi­na­tion of lead­er­ship and gov­er­nance is nec­es­sary if an or­gan­i­sa­tion is to re­spond ef­fec­tive­ly.

In the case of the li­cens­ing au­thor­i­ty, these chal­lenges are peren­ni­al. The Civ­il Ser­vice man­age­ment must re­spond quick­ly, not the min­is­ter. The ob­jec­tive chal­lenge is to de­vel­op an ap­proach which re­ori­ents the Civ­il Ser­vice cul­ture to one of adapt­abil­i­ty, flex­i­bil­i­ty and cre­ative think­ing. But these at­trib­ut­es are pre­cise­ly the op­po­site of the Civ­il Ser­vice as cur­rent­ly or­gan­ised, eval­u­at­ed and re­ward­ed. In­deed, the tools and tech­niques de­ployed at the Ser­vice Com­mis­sions and min­istries do not fa­cil­i­tate this ap­proach. The hu­man re­source man­age­ment tools de­ployed in the pub­lic ser­vice are not point­ed in this di­rec­tion. If there is one thing that would need to be changed it is the speed at which the Civ­il Ser­vice re­sponds to in­quiries at all lev­els. Next week we will look at some struc­tur­al is­sues. 

Mar­i­ano Browne is the CEO of the UWI Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness.