Personnel Management Reform in Singapore: Can Developing Countries Draw Lessons from it?

Abstract

Personnel management reforms initiated by Singapore in 1995 were designed to ensure due "executive" responsibility in its civil service personnel management system. The goal has been to achieve a condition of 'unity of command' and 'unified direction' under a 'hierarchical' central civil service organ, i.e. Public Service Division (PSD), located in the Prime Minister's Office. Under the post-reform arrangement, the PSD was assigned to regulate the national civil service. Handling matters of 'general' civil service management include policy oversight and coordination of the newly created 31 personnel boards, staff development and training, service conditions of the Schemes of Service, and pay and related research. Again, coordinating and supervising personnel management functions within individual ministries include coordination of annual graduate recruitment programmes and departmental promotions. Top line managers in individual ministries have been especially encouraged to treat personnel management as a key function. They have been called upon to adopt henceforth a hand-on pro-active approach towards managing the personnel. In short, the declared policy intent of reforms put into effect is that those directly responsible for carrying out the task of public service must be left free to judge the adequacy of the temper and the quality of the tools to be employed in that job. However, such independent bodies as the Public Service Commission and the Legal Rich Service Commission have been retained primarily to deal with selective senior level appointments and promotions, employee appeals and discipline, and to act as watch-dogs in maintaining merit system and employee rights. Although the reformed personnel management in Singapore has distinctive features of an improved new system, developing countries like Bangladesh interested in emulating the system must wait until its efficacy is proven in operational terms.