IF a country wants to go to a good place, it must have a high-performance civil service.
And an accountable one, too. Because it is those in the civil service that turn political direction into policies and programmes that get the nation there. But Malaysians, driven by either perception or experience, often think of our civil service as being on a long saunter to somewhere, not necessarily a good place.
The good news is a series of civil service reforms are being put in place to shake the 1.6 million-strong bureaucracy into shape for a new national future under the watch of recently appointed Chief Secretary Tan Sri Shamsul Azri Abu Bakar.
The Public Service Remuneration System (SSPA), which comes into effect on Dec 1, is a good place to start. The SSPA may be thought by many Malaysians to be just about salary and perks hikes. But it is more than that, as revealed in an interview by Shamsul Azri to the Media Prima Group on Thursday.
Built into the system are key strategies to ensure public service delivery, measured by defined performance metrics. A leaf from the private sector?
You could say a slice of it is in there. Even a persistent issue raised by all and sundry — the leniency in handling disciplinary issues and the low dismissal rate in the civil service — is something the SSPA would nail down decisively, assured Shamsul Azri. "We have implemented clear performance metrics to ensure accountability across the board," he added.
This must be pleasing to hear for Malaysians. News of corrupt officers never seems to cease making it to the media. On Thursday, there was one more.
A Pahang government official was arrested by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) in a crackdown on illegal extraction of minerals. He allegedly accepted bribes from two lorry operators to facilitate illegal bauxite excavation since 2022.
The two lorry operators were also arrested. In June, a Kuala Lumpur City Hall deputy director was arrested for soliciting bribes to protect prostitution dens. He is said to have received monthly bribes between RM100,000 and RM500,000 for several months.
The befuddling thing is this: how did bribery happen that high up for so long that no one in City Hall noticed it? There is only one answer: lack of accountability.
Now that he has been arrested, the law will hold him accountable if he is found guilty.
But accountability isn't to be left to MACC and the courts alone. The civil service must have its own system to make errant civil servants accountable long before that. If we read the top civil servant right, this is the job the SSPA is designed to do. Besides, waiting for MACC or the courts would mean years of loss of revenue for the government. If done right, the SSPA should be able to hold unethical officers to account long before that.
We are encouraged that Shamsul Azri is encouraging whistleblowers facing issues with their bosses to "come directly to me". Whistleblowers must be protected because without their help, corruption may be very hard to get rid of in the civil service.
MACC may be able to get rid of the scourge eventually, but Malaysia doesn't have the luxury of waiting for "eventually" to arrive.