Tan Sri Mohd Sidek Hassan

Tan Sri Ismail AdamTHE public service needs to evolve if it is to face an ever-changingenvironment caused by intense economic, social, technological andcompetitive pressures.The days of civil servants just pushing files andprocessing forms are long gone as the people are demanding more.In order to ensure quality service delivery and client satisfaction, we need aknowledgeable workforce high in thinking and doing.While high-doing is preferred, it is high-thinking about resolving the people’sproblems that ensures greater creativity and value addition in service delivery.The public service requires its workforce to think of new, better and faster waysto deliver the best outcomes for the people.We should not only find better ways of doing what we are doing but also questionwhether what we are doing needs to be done in the first place. To ensure thiscalibre of public servants requires the ability to manage talent.Attracting and retaining the best talents hasbecome the priority of the public service asit attempts to become a world beater.Our vision is to make the public service worldclass, excelling in planning, development andmanagement of human resources based onprofessionalism, integrity and the state-ofarttechnology.The days of civil servantsjust pushing files andprocessing forms are longgone as the people aredemanding more.But getting the best people is not enoughas we have to ensure that they are also theright people for the right jobs. Thus, we have introduced competency identificationto match a person’s competency with the job requirements.Accelerated career development for those with higher leadership potential is alsojust as important. Succession plans have been developed for this purpose. After all,knowing what is one’s career path is also a sure way of retaining talented staff.On top of this, leadership development programmes (with institutions such asIntan, Stanford, Harvard and Oxford) as well as joint training programmes with theCivil Service College Singapore and the Civil Service Institute Brunei Darussalamhad been instituted.Civil servants today can also look towards other continuous learning programmes,the pre-service scholarship programmes, the in-service scholarship programmes,short courses, and attachment programmes with private sector companies.17