Tan Sri Mohd Sidek Hassan

Public Service. We now, ironically, live in times where you simply need to know all youneed to know, failing which you risk falling back, scrambling or merely playing catch upwith the world that is fast moving past you in progress and development.There can be no service without communication and there can be no delivery withoutempathy. We must demonstrate that our approach both in its values and its strategiesis founded and anchored on empowering people so they can shape the services theydeliver and receive.Today, empowerment inclines towards a world that is in need of certainty and predictability.It is imperative therefore that the public service recognises the strength that rests both inbottom up and top down accountabilities. We need to ask ourselves how we can improvethings, even the simplest to making it even simpler wherever possible for our customerswithout compromising the integrity of service delivery. For this to happen we must firstbe able to empower our own people, regardless of ranks, to find their own solutions.Only when this is done can delivery be made with accountability.The Honourable Prime Minister, YAB Dato’ Sri Najib Tun Razak, has always encouragedpublic officials to constantly explain their decisions and actions when serving the people.When all is said and done, if we cannot articulate our actions even to ourselves, how canwe to the people who matter the most – our customers.It is my hope that the writings will never stop and this book will be the first of manyvolumes to come. I urge more to come forth to write of how the Public Service is beingimproved to better serve the people and the country.I would like to thank The Star for publishing our writing and in many instances guidingus in how best to position our topics and subjects so it better reaches the people. Wethank you.To the readers, we thank you for your candid feedback to each of our writings.Our gratitude to the Honourable Prime Minister for his unending support andencouragement of the Public Service and its officials.Finally, I hope we keep telling the stories we ourselves desperately want to read.TAN SRI MOHD SIDEK HASSAN