Increasing Levels of Innovation and Change to Promote Economic Growth and Productivity through Whole-of-Government Approach As the economy progressed, the policy focus switched from structural problems to economic growth and productivity. Subsequently in 1995, the Public Service for the 21st Century (PS21) reform movement was launched by Mr Lim Siong Guan (Former Head of Civil Service) to promote increasing levels of innovation and positive change in public services and enhanced their efficiency and responsiveness (Centre for Public Impact, 2018). The three key parameters of PS21 are as follow: 1. Government and the public sector would need to move away from direct management of the economy and society and assume the role of regulator, facilitator and enabler allowing others (especially private sector) to determine the direction of the economy. approach towards managing economic and social problems in order to urgently create jobs and meet the housing, education and infrastructure needs of the people. Policies implemented in the 1960s had a heavy emphasis on nation-building. The Housing and Development Act introduced a five-year plan to build as much low-cost housing as possible. The Home Ownership Scheme was passed in 1964 to encourage Singaporeans to own their homes, which was further supplemented in 1968 when the government started allowing people to use their Central Provident Fund (CPF) money to pay for the down-payments on their housing (Sim et al., 2003). Nurturing people’s talents through education is central to the country’s economic growth, productivity and development, being beneficial to both its people and society in general (Gopinathan, 2012). In order to quickly raise the educational qualifications of its citizens, educational policies focused on enabling every child to have an opportunity to be schooled to achieve basic levels of literacy and numeracy (Tan and Dimmock, 2014). The curriculum was also handled in a top-down fashion, and the Ministry of Education (MOE) introduced a teacher-proof curriculum, with common syllabuses and attainment standards, to ensure that all students were educated in the same way. At the beginning of self-government, the Public Service had to reform itself when the new local government found that senior civil servants were disconnected with the public after many years of colonial rule while Rank-and-file officers were rent-seeking. The Public Service had to reform itself to fit the new nation-building agenda (Low, 2018). A combination of socialisation and anti-corruption measures, driven by strong political will, reoriented the bureaucracy towards the tasks of nation-building. When Singapore embarked on rapid state-led development, senior public officers quickly equipped themselves with the management skills, becoming an “economic general staff” to manage the emerging capitalist developmental state as it required highly centralized, pragmatic, rational and legalistic policy making (Johnson, 1999; Neo and Chen, 2007). As a ‘top-down, command and control’ system of governance (Tan and Dimmock, 2014: 8), the ruling party was keen to emphasize that Singapore is administered not by politicians, but by bureaucrats in a meritocracy (Sharpe and Gopinathan, 2002). As such, a pragmatic approach characterized by elite-centric and expertise-based policy making was prevailing in Singapore. At the heart of the civil service, the spirit of meritocracy sets the main basis for the talent management approach to counter patronage especially at the recruitment stage whereby the ‘best and brightest’ assessed based on academic achievements are hired (Poocharoen & Lee, 2013; Lee, 2021). This is based on Singapore’s founding father and first prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew’s belief that “If you want Singapore to succeed…you must have a system that enables the best man and the most suitable to go into the job that needs them…” (Quah 2010). Meritocracy offers a fair system, which provides talented and hard-working people from all walks of life with a means of advancement and the opportunity to contribute to the wellbeing of the larger society. It can be a powerful vehicle for social mobility and incentivize people to do their best and reach their fullest potential. By the 1990s, the Singapore Public Service had become well regarded for its “competence, efficiency and integrity” (Jones, 1997). 2. Government and the public sector must be themselves the source of innovative policies and approaches to public service, 3. The public sector needs to move away from an administrative and control mind-set and adopt a ‘service’ culture and attitude otherwise known as dynamic governance (Neo & Chen, 2007). 129
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