GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Imag­ine re­tir­ing from the pub­lic ser­vice and hav­ing to wait as long as five years to col­lect your pen­sion?

This is among is­sues that the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion is seek­ing to ad­dress in its quest to make sys­tems and process­es more stream­lined and mod­ern with­in the pub­lic ser­vice.

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Allyson West made the com­ment yes­ter­day while speak­ing on the sec­ond day of the bi­en­ni­al con­fer­ence of the Hu­man Re­source Man­age­ment As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (HRMATT) which was held at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain.

West de­scribed as “te­dious” the process of en­sur­ing that pub­lic ser­vants re­ceive their pen­sions when they re­tire. This is be­cause, she said, it can be dif­fi­cult to lo­cate all of the nec­es­sary doc­u­men­ta­tion as much of the pub­lic ser­vice is still pa­per based.

She added that records are lost and can take years to find, which im­pedes the process of a pub­lic ser­vant ob­tain­ing his or her full pen­sion. How­ev­er, the min­is­ter said this is chang­ing.

“We are seek­ing to trans­form pub­lic ser­vice de­liv­ery with our change-man­age­ment train­ing pro­gramme, which is cur­rent­ly in progress, the learn­ings from which will as­sist all min­istries in the ex­pe­di­tious roll-out of their dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion projects.

“We have al­so learned from the re­cent pan­dem­ic the crit­i­cal re­quire­ment for Gov­ern­ment and in­sti­tu­tions to be ag­ile and flex­i­ble, proac­tive and cit­i­zen cen­tric. Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion will fa­cil­i­tate that flex­i­bil­i­ty even as it forces us to re­assess the role of the mod­ern pub­lic ser­vice, as well as the role and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the mod­ern pub­lic of­fi­cer,” West out­lined.

She al­so not­ed that her min­istry is al­so mind­ful of the in­creas­ing preva­lence and ben­e­fits of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, not on­ly for wider pub­lic ser­vice de­liv­ery but al­so for its pub­lic ser­vice hu­man re­sources man­age­ment process­es.

But what would this mean for the hun­dreds of front­line cus­tomer ser­vice staff in the 23 gov­ern­ment min­istries?

Ac­cord­ing to West, the biggest fear as a re­sult of these changes is loss of se­cu­ri­ty.

How­ev­er, she as­sured, “What I tell pub­lic ser­vants all the time is: stop fight­ing the change; it is com­ing, in fact, it is here. We need to em­brace and adapt to it and take ad­van­tage of the op­por­tu­ni­ties that the Gov­ern­ment is pro­vid­ing to reskill.

“Even as pub­lic ser­vants clam­our for re­mote work, they are fight­ing the tech­nol­o­gy that will fa­cil­i­tate it. We can­not want change but not want to change. That is counter in­tu­itive,” the min­is­ter said.

Not­ing that HR im­prove­ment ini­tia­tives are pro­gress­ing, West added that tan­gi­ble im­prove­ments are ex­pect­ed to be seen over the next two years.

How­ev­er, she said there is a “quite a way to go” to­wards de­vel­op­ing the req­ui­site leg­isla­tive and pol­i­cy frame­works to sup­port mod­ern HR prac­tices that pro­mote ful­ly dig­i­tal back­end Gov­ern­ment ser­vices and the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of HR through­out the pub­lic sec­tor.

West added that the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion al­so stands ready to part­ner with the HRMATT, and oth­er stake­hold­ers to work to­wards a mod­ern and pro­fes­sion­al cadre of pub­lic ser­vice hu­man re­sources man­age­ment staff.