Harvard's Way Forward!

Harvardisation of Civil Services

The Govt is adopting Harvard University’s Management Tools to help reform the civil services competencies.

It had engaged a Harvard Professors consulting Team since January to review and upgrade the quality and capacity of senior civil servants to effectively design, articulate and implement public policies including GLCs.

The team, according to Tan Sri Dr. Lin See Yan, the Harvard Club of Malaysia President, will undertake a quality review of the technical capability and capacity of development administration in Malaysia, identifying the needs and problems and offering solutions. Under the term of reference, the team can propose measures to collaborate with Harvard and other world-class institutions. It can also make recommendations for actions that are cost-effective as well as reflective of the best Malaysian traditions of government and the needs of a modern and civil society in a rapidly globalising world.

Meanwhile, the Harvard Club of Malaysia is organising executive education programmes on corporate governance conducted by Prof Dr. Quinn Mills from Harvard University.

This is a positive effort taken by the government to seek improvement to the public service delivery system that include Government-Linked Companies. It shows that the current system management is not afraid to learn from others and to learn from the best of the best.

But, is it the solution to our problem? Is the solution sought the right anecdote and tonic to our systemic failures?

First and foremost, the hypothesis is unknown, at least to the public.

When seeking a solution to a problem, we had to identify the causes of defects and failures. And we had to go the root cause of failures. Take an example, Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM), since the 1980s, had been scouting and employing the best coaches the badminton world had ever produced and we had since the last 2 decades engaged almost all available world best coaches. But what was the result? We did not produce a crop of world beaters and the results were clear and unambiguous - we failed to win any world titles and we had not produce potential world class players from the development programmes that had cost the government hundreds of millions, if not billions over the last twenty years or so. So, what was the reason? It cannot be due to poor coaching? It is administration and management failures. It include political patronage and influences that impeded the management abilities to move forward and it curtail progress.

Coming back to the Harvardisation of civil services, what had been the problem of the delivery system failures or weaknesses?

Using the BAM as a case study, hypothetically, are we not seeking the coaches to reconstruct the civil service delivery system? Is that what we need. These professors may be able to identify our problems and recommend corrctive and preventive actions. But what about the implementation system and directoring? Haven't we learned from our history that "Malaysia and Malaysians is never short of rules, regulations, procedures, and knowledges." What had always been seen unpretentiously is that, we have all these years failed to implement change holistically and courageously. We built systems and disciplines, but the political system has other objectives, needs and wants. Projects are mooted not because we need it but because we want it to fill the desires of the political agendas.

So, what is our problem? The system managers and the PM and his cabinet should consider the real issue. It can relate to MONEY POLITICS AND MONIES NEEDED FOR POLITICIANS. Our system of political management is about churning money out from the system and fulfilling the lust and crave for ultra wealth and material pleasures of the political players. Decisions are made to suit the political game plan, and not for the interest of the rakyat as a whole. The planning and implementations are often being reconstructed and changed to suit short term needs and not long term efficiencies. Selection criterias are not based on meritocracy. We encourage our childrens to study hard and achieve excellent results, but the system would not ensure that those who had achieved those results would be guaranteed educational needs of the highest level.

As long as the system do not nurture and breeds competency and quality of the highest level, and the utilization of mass resources, Harvardisation will end up as another show-piece for the workbook.

I am not a doom-sayer. I do have hope that we are moving in the right direction and I do applaud the decision of Harvardisation. But, we need to see radical change, particularly in the system of managing development expenditure and the management of human resources, including the management of future leaders - that is the Malaysian children now in school. HONESTY and INTEGRITY of those managers and executives will prove my hypothesis wrong. But would those in-charge and leaders want to place honesty and integrity as ABSOLUTES, or will it still be OBSOLETES?