Mar­i­ano Browne

When buy­ing a ve­hi­cle, a wise pur­chas­er re­search­es the al­ter­na­tives rel­a­tive to the avail­able bud­get and the ve­hi­cle’s in­tend­ed use. Oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions in­clude re­li­a­bil­i­ty, avail­abil­i­ty, main­te­nance and en­gine pow­er as these are key in ac­quir­ing an ef­fi­cient and eco­nom­i­cal ve­hi­cle. Con­se­quent­ly, au­to­mo­bile man­u­fac­tur­ers in­vest con­sid­er­able time and mon­ey in en­sur­ing that their ve­hi­cles not on­ly look good but are pow­ered by ef­fi­cient en­gines to en­sure a good dri­ving ex­pe­ri­ence and a sat­is­fied cus­tomer. This metaphor is ap­plic­a­ble to the civ­il ser­vice as it is the ex­e­cut­ing arm of the Gov­ern­ment (Cab­i­net), the ve­hi­cle through which the Cab­i­net's plans and poli­cies are im­ple­ment­ed, and the state ap­pa­ra­tus main­tained.

Gov­ern­ment is re­spon­si­ble for de­vel­op­ing and main­tain­ing the reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work and en­sur­ing that the in­sti­tu­tion­al, hu­man and phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture is ap­pro­pri­ate to fa­cil­i­tate the de­vel­op­ment of civ­il so­ci­ety and pri­vate sec­tor in­vestors. This cov­ers the en­tire range of pub­lic goods which al­lows civ­il so­ci­ety to func­tion; birth and death cer­tifi­cates, li­cences of var­i­ous kinds, per­mits, pass­ports, land reg­is­tra­tion, build­ing per­mits and ap­provals etc...A re­li­able in­sti­tu­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture cre­ates the con­text for the growth and de­vel­op­ment of a vi­brant, vi­able econ­o­my to fa­cil­i­tate de­vel­op­ment. The fo­cus is on the civ­il ser­vice, peo­ple ap­point­ed by the PSC rather than the wider de­f­i­n­i­tion of pub­lic ser­vice and those ap­point­ed by oth­er ser­vice com­mis­sions (teach­ers, po­lice, etc).

Every gov­ern­ment since in­de­pen­dence has been tasked with lead­ing and co­or­di­nat­ing the task of eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. To gov­ern suc­cess­ful­ly, the civ­il ser­vice ve­hi­cle, and the ex­e­cut­ing agency must be fit for that pur­pose. But there is no civ­il ser­vice man­u­fac­tur­er. It is recog­nised that progress to­wards im­ple­ment­ing these plans and pol­i­cy ob­jec­tives has been stymied by weak and un­der­per­form­ing in­sti­tu­tions which are both a cause and a con­se­quence of un­der­per­for­mance. The gap be­tween the ac­tu­al ver­sus the ex­pect­ed stan­dard of per­for­mance has been la­belled an “im­ple­men­ta­tion deficit” or “in­sti­tu­tion­al in­er­tia.”

Sev­er­al rea­sons for the un­der­achieve­ment have been ad­vanced. They in­clude lead­er­ship fail­ure, pub­lic sec­tor bu­reau­cra­cy, the bud­get­ing process, the long-term na­ture of de­vel­op­ment ob­jec­tives rel­a­tive to the short elec­toral cy­cle, in­ad­e­quate fund­ing and that the civ­il ser­vice re­sponds slow­ly to Cab­i­net di­rec­tives. Fur­ther, chang­ing po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tions re­sult in in­con­sis­tent ob­jec­tives. For ex­am­ple, whilst the Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion spoke to Vi­sion 2020, the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion fo­cused on growth poles, whilst the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion speaks to Vi­sion 2030.

How­ev­er, the elec­toral cy­cle is de­ter­mined by the Con­sti­tu­tion and can­not be changed quick­ly. Nei­ther can civ­il ser­vice per­son­nel be re­placed eas­i­ly. Any ad­min­is­tra­tion must strive to achieve its agen­da hop­ing that the elec­torate will be pleased with the re­sult and re­elect them to con­tin­ue do­ing a de­cent job with­in this frame­work. To do so, the role, ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness of the state/agen­cies must be ad­dressed as they are the en­gine that the coun­try must re­ly on to achieve progress. For the Gov­ern­ment to dri­ve the de­vel­op­ment process, and the pri­vate sec­tor to pow­er eco­nom­ic growth, the en­gine, the civ­il ser­vice, must be com­pe­tent, ef­fec­tive, ef­fi­cient and ap­pro­pri­ate­ly sized to un­der­take the task.

In this con­text, en­gines must be ser­viced reg­u­lar­ly to im­prove their per­for­mance. Two themes ar­tic­u­lat­ed in the T&T Vi­sion 2030 doc­u­ment, “Putting peo­ple first: Nur­tur­ing our great­est as­set” and “de­liv­er­ing Good Gov­ern­ment and ser­vice ex­cel­lence” al­so ap­ply to the civ­il ser­vice. They sig­nal that civ­il ser­vice re­form is es­sen­tial if the long-term goal of a “high-qual­i­ty mod­ern pub­lic ser­vice” is to be achieved.

In prac­tice, this re­quires an ef­fi­cient hu­man re­source man­age­ment sys­tem which pro­duces well-trained staff so that cit­i­zens can in­ter­act with the Gov­ern­ment in a man­ner which does not waste time and gets the job done. For ex­am­ple, mak­ing pass­port or dri­ver's per­mit re­newals easy, hav­ing your car in­spect­ed with­out a long wait, or mak­ing it eas­i­er to pay one’s tax­es on time or reg­is­ter a com­pa­ny.

This means that sys­tems and pro­ce­dures must be re­viewed, up­grad­ed and stan­dard­ised across all branch­es of gov­ern­ment. This is eas­i­er said than done and means dif­fer­ent things across dif­fer­ent min­istries and branch­es of gov­ern­ment. For ex­am­ple, whilst the Gov­ern­ment boast­ed about how much mon­ey was spent on grants and as­sis­tance to those af­fect­ed by the pan­dem­ic, how many ap­plied and how many were suc­cess­ful? Did the as­sis­tance reach those in need? These ques­tions deal with process ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness of which noth­ing has been said.

Trans­lat­ing the broad pol­i­cy goal of good gov­ern­ment and ser­vice ex­cel­lence re­quires a gran­u­lar ap­proach, min­istry by min­istry, which is mea­sured and eval­u­at­ed to en­sure that progress is be­ing made. The man­age­ment say­ing “what gets mea­sured gets man­aged” is key to mak­ing con­tin­u­ous progress. Broad lofty state­ments, like “good gov­er­nance” and “ser­vice ex­cel­lence” are as­pi­ra­tional. The dev­il is in the de­tails.

How is this to be achieved, and what progress has been made to date? What are the ini­tia­tives that cre­ate this out­come, and who is dri­ving the process? Who is mea­sur­ing the progress to­ward the goal and for trans­paren­cy’s sake, where are the progress re­ports be­ing re­port­ed? The next se­ries of ar­ti­cles will ad­dress these top­ics.