KUALA LUMPUR: The civil service needs to undergo transformation through dynamic governance, said secretary-general of the Tourism, Arts and Culture Ministry Datuk Isham Ishak.
He said through the practice of dynamic governance, the performance of the civil service would improve significantly and this would help the government to achieve developed nation status.
“The situation in Malaysia currently is that we are at a point where we will succeed or not succeed, so the situation is critical now. To me, civil servants have a very heavy responsibility in determining the country’s future.
“However, dynamic governance does not happen by chance, it has to be created and it needs to be intended to happen,” he said during the Harvard Talk on the topic, ‘A Strategy for Leading Innovation in Public Administration’, here, yesterday.
“Dynamic governance is deliberate cooperation between the political and public sector leaderships in order to achieve key economic and social objectives.
“The political leadership must not be corrupt and ineffective or the public sector would be hampered, no matter how competent it is,” he explained.
Quoting the Government Effectiveness Ranking 2018 by the World Bank, he said the performance of the civil service had been declining since 2014 and it was ranked lowly for accountability, impartiality, transparency and openness.
Therefore, he said counter-measures should be taken via innovation and competitiveness in the civil service, especially in accelerating globalisation and unrelenting technological advancement.
Taking the case study of Singapore’s public sector as a success story, he noted that “new ideas need to be brought forward, so we could become stronger and think of something for us to bring the public sector back on track.”
Bicara Harvard, organised by the National Library of Malaysia, is a platform for sharing of knowledge with the objective of providing understanding to the public on the importance of education and knowledge in shaping the nation. – Bernama
