Man­ag­ing a coun­try is a com­plex task as there are pub­lic ser­vices that are es­sen­tial to its sur­vival but are not a nat­ur­al fit for the pri­vate sec­tor.

Pub­lic health and safe­ty, wa­ter and sew­er­age, bor­der con­trol and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, the rule of law, and a jus­tice sys­tem are ex­am­ples of ar­eas that are the nat­ur­al province of the state.

His­tor­i­cal­ly, these tasks fell to kings, em­per­ors, and their courts, the of­fi­cials who made things hap­pen. Rulers al­ways need ad­min­is­tra­tors and tax­es to man­age pub­lic ser­vices if civ­il dis­or­der is to be avoid­ed. A prac­ti­cal ap­proach to the task of gov­er­nance had to be in­vent­ed.

His­tor­i­cal records sug­gest the Han dy­nasty in Chi­na around 207 BCE had the most de­vel­oped idea of a civ­il ser­vice us­ing ed­u­cat­ed min­is­ters and ad­min­is­tra­tors. Find­ing the best peo­ple to man­age is al­ways a dif­fi­cult task. By 600 CE, the Qing dy­nasty in Chi­na solved this is­sue by de­vel­op­ing a civ­il ser­vice ex­am­i­na­tion sys­tem based on mer­i­toc­ra­cy.

By com­par­i­son, Eng­land’s civ­il ser­vice came much lat­er to the task of man­ag­ing its em­pire. The foun­da­tions of the British Civ­il Ser­vice lie in the pri­vate sec­tor-ori­ent­ed East In­dia Com­pa­ny, where the term “civ­il ser­vant” was in­vent­ed.

The ap­point­ment of Gen­er­al Charles Corn­wal­lis in 1785 is im­por­tant as he was in­stru­men­tal in en­act­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive and le­gal re­forms that fun­da­men­tal­ly al­tered civ­il ad­min­is­tra­tion and land prac­tices in In­dia.

He is cred­it­ed with “… set­ting the stan­dards for the ser­vices courts and rev­enue col­lec­tion that re­mained un­al­tered al­most to the end of the British era.” (Dupont 2001). Per­haps his fail­ure to de­feat the re­bel­lious Amer­i­can colonies mo­ti­vat­ed a su­pe­ri­or per­for­mance in In­dia.

The East In­dia Com­pa­ny was so pow­er­ful and its ac­tiv­i­ties so gov­ern­men­tal that its op­er­a­tions be­came in­ter­twined with the Gov­ern­ment in Eng­land. This led to in­creas­ing calls for re­form and led to the es­tab­lish­ment of a com­mit­tee led by Lords North­cote and Trevelyan to re­view the po­si­tion.

A re­port was pub­lished in 1854 en­ti­tled “Re­port of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Per­ma­nent Civ­il Ser­vice, to­geth­er with a let­ter from the Rev B Jowett.”

It is cred­it­ed as the found­ing doc­u­ment of the British Civ­il Ser­vice.

The re­port was crit­i­cal of the ex­ist­ing de­part­ments for al­low­ing pa­tron­age to in­flu­ence ap­point­ments and of their cor­rup­tion and in­ef­fi­cien­cy. It es­tab­lished that civ­il ser­vants should be ap­point­ed on mer­it and through open com­pe­ti­tion rather than pa­tron­age. The re­port was in­flu­enced by the Chi­nese Im­pe­r­i­al ex­am­i­na­tions and rec­om­mend­ed that en­try in­to the Civ­il Ser­vice on mer­it should be fa­cil­i­tat­ed through ex­am­i­na­tions.

Since the 1854 North­cote/Trevelyan Re­port, the British Civ­il Ser­vice has been re­viewed many times in ad­di­tion to in­di­vid­ual de­part­men­tal re­forms. These re­views have fo­cused main­ly on man­age­ment and ef­fi­cien­cy.

Since T&T adopt­ed the British Civ­il Ser­vice mod­el in 1962, there has been no com­pre­hen­sive re­view while there have been many re­views and changes to the UK mod­el.

The au­thors of the 1968 Ful­ton re­port in the UK com­plained that it had not been al­lowed to ex­am­ine ques­tions such as the re­la­tion­ships be­tween min­is­ters and of­fi­cials, the num­ber and size of de­part­ments, and their re­la­tion­ships amongst each oth­er and with the cab­i­net of­fice. The Thatch­er years fo­cused on ef­fi­cien­cy mea­sures and in­creased use of pri­vati­sa­tion as a de­vice to al­low pri­vate sec­tor ef­fi­cien­cies. High-pro­file re­forms have not al­ways achieved the re­sults.

The point is that all or­gan­i­sa­tions, civ­il ser­vice bu­reau­cra­cies in­clud­ed, must ei­ther adapt to chang­ing ex­ter­nal cir­cum­stances or be­come dys­func­tion­al. This re­quires a will­ing­ness to ad­dress key is­sues that may hin­der the per­for­mance of dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tions.

No po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tion will be suc­cess­ful if the pub­lic ser­vice can­not im­ple­ment its man­i­festo poli­cies and pro­grammes.

Dr Ter­rence Far­rell’s book “The Un­der Achiev­ing So­ci­ety” iden­ti­fies an “im­ple­men­ta­tion deficit” in his dis­cus­sion of the var­i­ous de­vel­op­men­tal poli­cies be­tween 1958 and 2008.

It rais­es the key is­sue of ad­dress­ing the de­vel­op­ment ob­jec­tives of a grow­ing so­ci­ety. It is not clear whether this deficit is a re­sult of in­sti­tu­tion­al de­fi­cien­cy, or a cul­tur­al propen­si­ty to un­der­achieve.

In “We Like It So”, Dr Far­rell ex­plores the so­cio-cul­tur­al fac­tors that “neg­a­tive­ly in­flu­ence the eco­nom­ic per­for­mance of Trinidad and To­ba­go and ar­guably oth­er for­mer colo­nial ter­ri­to­ries in the West In­dies.”

His­tor­i­cal ori­gin will in­deed leave scars and neg­a­tive in­flu­ences. How­ev­er, the lan­guage and cul­ture of achieve­ment need a dif­fer­ent ap­proach than the in­vo­ca­tion of neg­a­tive his­tor­i­cal in­flu­ences.

Oth­er coun­tries have been able to adapt and ad­just to the re­quire­ments of de­vel­op­ment even in the face of eth­nic and cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences. There­fore, so­cial change is dif­fi­cult but not im­pos­si­ble. It does mean that pos­i­tive ad­just­ments must be co­or­di­nat­ed to in­clude peo­ple, process­es and sys­tems. The re­al­i­ty is that pub­lic ser­vice re­form in T&T has not been se­ri­ous­ly at­tempt­ed.

The first at­tempt at a sys­temic re­form of the hu­man re­source func­tion in the civ­il ser­vice, “The Drap­er Ini­tia­tive,” was stymied by a change in po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tions. Those changes were the first steps.

Con­tin­u­ing and deep­en­ing those re­forms lacked com­mit­ment, ei­ther from the pub­lic ser­vice heads or the in­com­ing po­lit­i­cal par­ty.

Ad­dress­ing the re­quired changes will be the sub­ject of next week’s ar­ti­cle.

Mar­i­ano Browne is the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the UWI Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School Of Busi­ness.