KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY MR PETER HO AT THE FIJIAN SERVICE EXCELLENCE AWARDS ON 19TH OCTOBER 2012

19/10/2012


Chief Guest, Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama,

Prime Minister of the Republic of Fiji

Distinguished Guests

Ladies and Gentlemen

I am honoured to join you tonight and to be part of this very meaningful event. I congratulate all the individuals and agencies for their achievements in this year's Service Excellence Awards Programme. Such programmes remind us of the duty to deliver quality service that the public service and its officers owe to the people.

Why Service Excellence?

Why is quality service important in the public service? After all, the public service is not a business that needs to attract customers. It is very often the sole provider of public goods and services. People have little choice but to deal with public agencies.

Governments serve the people. The people pay taxes. They have a right to expect that the government will deliver the best value in return.

The delivery of quality service engenders trust between government and the people. Public trust empowers the government of the day to focus on good governance and good national outcomes. Without public trust, a government's room to manoeuvre will be stifled by criticism and resentment. It will then be unable to maximise public value.

The relationship between government and the people is sometimes mistakenly perceived to be merely transactional. The government makes policies on the one hand, and the people receive and benefit from the policies on the other.

People as Partners

The people - the citizens - should not be regarded merely as recipients and beneficiaries of public goods and services. Rather, they should be viewed as customers and partners in service delivery, in which they are served with courtesy, respect and efficiency. This is the consideration that the most successful companies in the private sector accord to their loyal customers.

Companies see excellent service as a major factor in drawing repeat customers and expanding their businesses. But public agencies have a reason that goes beyond this consideration. In providing excellent service, they win the trust of the people. In turn, this leads to better buy-in for their policies and regulations. This creates a virtuous cycle - excellent service delivery ensures that people become more supportive of public policies, which then makes it easier for public agencies to execute these policies on the ground.

Let me use an example to illustrate this point. If policemen treat the general public with courtesy and respect in the course of carrying out their duties, members of the public become more willing to reciprocate by assisting the police as partners in crime prevention. This will result in a win-win situation for all.

Service Excellence in Singapore

Tonight, I would like to share a few learning points from the journey towards service excellence undertaken by the Singapore Public Service. I hope that you will find them relevant.

'Service' is one of the three core values of the Singapore Public Service. The other two values are "Integrity" and "Excellence". Our service philosophy is embedded in PS21 - or Public Service for the 21st Century - which is the movement to mobilise the whole of the Singapore Public Service.

The tandem objectives of PS21 are firstly to foster a mindset among public officers that welcomes change as a way to achieve greater efficiency and cost-effectiveness. At the same time, the morale and welfare of public servants is emphasised. Secondly, PS21 aims to nurture an attitude of service excellence. Public officers are expected to apply high standards of quality and courtesy in dealing with members of the public.

At the individual level, PS21 empowers public officers to make a difference, no matter what job they are doing. Empowerment is especially important for frontline officers who today face increasingly demanding customers, many of whom will not take 'no' for an answer. The relationship between public service providers and customers is even more challenging for officers working in agencies whose core work is in enforcement of regulations, such as the Singapore Public Force (or SPF).

To address this challenge, the SPF developed a Collective Leadership Model about fifteen years ago. This model builds a culture of trust and openness. It nurtures thinking officers who feel empowered to solve problems on the spot, instead of referring every decision upwards. Over the years, frontline police officers have moved from blindly following rigid Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) - that at any rate cannot anticipate every situation - to solving problems because they understand the principles underpinning these SOPs. This has vastly improved customer satisfaction and public confidence in the SPF.

The CARE Principles

In 1995, the Singapore Public Service adopted a set of core principles on service, known by the acronym CARE (or Courtesy, Accessibility, Responsiveness, Effectiveness). To ensure its continued relevance in a fast changing world, the CARE principles were updated last year to include three more values - people-centricity, mutual courtesy and respect, and shared responsibility for public good.

The service principles of CARE reflect the special relationship between government and the people. The breakthrough thinking behind CARE is to place citizens and customers at the centre of the business of government. They are central not only to the work of frontline staff, but also to the work of policy makers and backend staff. Good service is a result of coordinated organisational effort, starting upstream from policies that take a people-centric perspective, and implemented downstream with courtesy, respect and efficiency.

Over the years, the emphasis on CARE throughout the Singapore Public Service is celebrated in the annual Star Service Award ceremony. It is not unlike your Service Excellence Awards Programme. At the agency level, measures include technology-driven service innovations, and the simplification and streamlining of service processes. Public agencies also work hand-in-hand with members of the public to deliver better services for the wider public good.

CARE in Action

To illustrate CARE in action, I will give two examples of Star Service Award winners who went that extra mile to serve their customers.

One of them is an Aftercare officer. His job involves helping young offenders reintegrate into the community. He counsels and guides them in setting life goals, and works with their families to support them. He also plays the role of advocate, convincing schools and employers to give them a second chance. His hard work does not always bear fruit. Some of these youths drop out of school, or give up their jobs, or simply re-offend. However, the officer has never been discouraged. His is committed to this work, and maintains a positive attitude and a high level of professionalism. His passion has touched the lives of many young people. One of them was so grateful that ten years after his discharge from a Boy's Home, he wrote to express his gratitude to the officer after graduating with high honours from a university in Singapore.

The second example is of two public officers from the Singapore Civil Defence Force. Although off-duty, they helped an injured motorcyclist who had been involved in a road accident with a bus. They first attended to the injury. Then, one of the officers helped to divert traffic while awaiting the arrival of the ambulance. Their sense of dedication and duty in the face of crisis is the embodiment of the values contained in CARE.

Both examples are extraordinary and ordinary at the same time. They are extraordinary because these officers delivered excellent service not because they were told to do so, but because they felt it was the right thing to do. They are ordinary in the sense that there are countless officers like them who are just as committed and passionate about quality service. This is the holy grail of service excellence, when the extraordinary becomes ordinary.

CARE at the Agency Level

I would also like to share with you two examples of how CARE operates at the agency level.

The Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (or IRAS), Singapore's tax administration, sees the building of trust with taxpayers as crucial to its ability to deliver effective customer service. In many countries, the tax collector is viewed with great suspicion. IRAS works continuously to dispel this negative perception. Through deliberate and regular interactions with customers, IRAS gains insights into how its tax policies and procedures are perceived and where the problem areas are. These are valuable inputs when tax policies and rules are reviewed. Realising that no one likes paying taxes, IRAS is constantly looking for ways to make it easier for taxpayers to file and pay their taxes. Leveraging on technology has been an important approach. It has enabled IRAS to produce innovative electronic-filing, and even no-filing tax systems. These have made tax filling a hassle-free and an almost pleasant experience for most Singaporeans.

Our National Library Board (or NLB) uses innovative methods and technology to make library services inclusive and accessible to different segments in Singapore society. Despite having a main library and a network of 25 branch libraries across Singapore, and achieving one of the highest borrowing rates in the world, NLB still does not reach all segments of society. So, to bring library resource even closer to home, NLB launched a Mobile Library Bus called Molly in 2008. By the end of last year, Molly has reached out to more than 400 organisations including special education schools, voluntary welfare organisations and homes, serving more than 230,000 readers. In February this year, Molly was enhanced with new technological features, which includes an in-built book drop as well as iPads to enable people to try out eBooks and eResources.

Partnering the Public

The Singapore Public Service sees members of the public as its partners in the journey towards service excellence. Both parties work together for the greater pubic good.

The SPF has been partnering the community in its policing and crime prevention efforts. Over the years, SPF's approach towards security and policing have evolved into one in which crime fighting is now a shared responsibility between Police and the public.

A recent project co-created between the SPF and citizens is "Delta Citizenry". An initiative started in 2010 in a residential district called Clementi, the project has so far recruited almost 600 members. Members help by reporting suspicious activity to the Police. With the help of these volunteers, the Police have been able to reduce the number of preventable crimes in Clementi - robbery, housebreaking, car theft, snatch theft, and outrage of modesty - by 39% in 2011.

The 3P Partnership Strategy of the National Environment Agency (or NEA) is an example of co-creation between the Public, Private and People sectors. Introduced in 2002, the 3P Partnership Strategy takes a collaborative approach. Different segments of the community and society from the Public, Private and People sectors work together to promote environmental ownership and responsibility. For example, reducing mosquito breeding to prevent the spread of dengue fever is a priority for NEA. Through the 3P Partnership Strategy, NEA has jointly developed and rolled out a slew of dengue prevention activities and outreach initiatives throughout Singapore. The multiplier effect has been significant. NEA would not have been able to achieve so much on its own.

Besides improving their structures and processes and partnering members of the public for better service delivery, public agencies have also set themselves minimum service standards as service pledges to their customers. These service standards are usually displayed in the online home pages of the agencies' websites to assure the public of their service commitments.

Central Service Policies

As the Singapore Public Service is a large entity comprising more than 80 ministries and statutory boards, there are central service policies to guide and align service delivery at the Whole-of-Government (WOG) level. The Singapore Public Service introduced the No Wrong Door (or NWD) policy in 2004. When public agencies receive calls or feedback from members of the public that do not fall under their purview, the NWD policy requires them to put the members of the public in contact with the correct agency, so they are not pushed from pillar to post to have their queries attended to.

The No Wrong Door Policy was enhanced this year with a First Responder Protocol (or FRP). The FRP addresses service issues that are inter-agency in nature, but which have not clear agency ownership. This protocol requires the first agency with the domain knowledge that receives a public feedback of this nature to diagnose the problem. It must then draw the required expertise from other public agencies to coordinate an effective response.

Serving Business

The Singapore Public Service is not just about serving the people. It also serves private businesses and companies in order to promote sustained and inclusive growth for Singapore. The Pro-Enterprise Panel (or PEP), which is chaired by the Head of Civil Service, is a public-private partnership set up in 2000 to help improve government rules and regulations that may impede business activity. The PEP also encourages innovating by inviting businesses to submit good ideas that utilise government assets, and then giving them a head start if their ideas are accepted. Since 2000, the PEP has received more than 1,800 suggestions and accepted more than half of them. These suggestions facilitate business operations. The PEP process also helps public officers to better understood the needs of businesses, creating a win-win situation for all.

Conclusion

Service excellence is about building and sustaining trust and partnership between government and the people, its customers. Service excellence requires keeping an ear to the ground, and accepting feedback and criticism. Dedicated public officers should be empowered to make a difference to their customers in their daily work. Public agencies should strive to be innovative, to improve and event o reinvent the way things are done. A Whole-of-Government approach is also needed to ensure that issues do not fall through the cracks merely because of ambiguous agency ownership.

Service excellence is journey without end, in which customers are partners and stakeholders, who co-create with public agencies to contribute towards nation-building, and a better society for all.

The Service Excellence Awards Programme tonight bears witness to your Government's dedication in realising and promoting service excellence in your Public Service.

I wish you a meaningful evening ahead.

Thank you.