The role of the public service has played a great significant and supportive role in the development of our country. Its strong administrative machinery has enabled us to propel our development which has earned admiration from the world.
A responsive public sector has made it possible for us to enjoy the good life that most Malaysians take for granted.
During the post-Independence period the Government focused on the needs of successive and by implication, it involved the major participation of the public sector. In the 1960s, focus was on rural development, which aimed to improve the livelihood of the community by focusing on the provision of basic amenities, infrastructure development, the opening of agricultural lands and the establishment of industries.
The launching of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in the 1970s saw the public sector playing a leading role in controlling & managing poverty and the restructuring of society through the establishment of numerous public enterprises.
The industrialization era in the 1980s indicated a shift in the paradigm, which recognized the role of the private sector as the engine for growth.
The launching of the National Development Policy (NDP) and the introduction of Vision 2020 in the 1990s reaffirmed the role of the private sector as the engine for growth and the public sector as the facilitator in the development process.
With the introduction of the National Vision Policy (2001-2010), the primary focus shifted to strengthening growth with equity for society. In this regard, the public sector is to maintain its role towards achieving our national objectives.
To be successful in the public sector, public relations have to be stressed and emphasized. It must become highly tuned to the needs and expectations of the public. Sam Walton, the founder of the Wal Mart, knew the importance of managing the customer; he said, those who are to succeed with the customer must guarantee that the customer be maintained.
To do so civil workers should constantly strive to perform at a level well beyond the expectations of clients. Bureaucracy may be hindrance to better performance.
Secondly, a culture of high performance for civil servant needs focus on the quality. This means to constantly evaluate the value of their output and their delivery, better service and products. It takes the discipline, understanding with regard to the tools and to develop benchmarks so that focus on quality becomes second nature to the public service.
Thirdly, a culture of high performance requires personal and professional accountability. The failure to achieve a set of common goals or objectives is viewed as a personal failure. This should also be true for the public service.
Taskforces, working groups, technical committees and time-honored procedures are important mechanisms in the government, but they should not dilute an individual’s personal accountability.
A fourth characteristic a culture of high performance is the commitment to continuous improvement. In a changing world, no organization can survive by remaining the same over a long period of time; it has to improve, to renew and to reinvent itself.
A culture of high performance demands that workers always look for opportunities in order to improve so they can create their own future.
Finally, no workforce can achieve a high level of performance if it does not work as a team. Teamwork means better coordination, less duplication and fragmentation, more speed and better results.
Often the complaint about government agencies is that the left hand does not know what the right is doing.
As a result, policies sometimes seem to contradict one another. While steering committees, taskforces and working groups are used to improve coordination, many may fall short of bringing about the true spirit of teamwork.
The process of building and sustaining a culture of high performance requires transformation in the public sector and the changes require bold action and concerted efforts to reassess the way we execute our tasks, measure, appraise performance, develop talent and also the way we link performance to reward the civil servant.