Self-declared World-class Civil Service

I nearly puke when I read the headlines:

Najib is all praise for world-class civil service

This is what we call, Malaysia Boleh, Mudah Lupa, Mudah, sangat mudah.

There's no shame in self-praise. It's election time, and the massive votes from the civil services are necessary to ensure Barisan Nasional wins with 2/3 majority.

World-class civil service? Does Najib knows what's world-class civil service?

Does he knows what's the evaluation criteria to be world-class? And does he knows what's the key performance index of each criteria?

Take the JKR (PWD) as an example. Can all my JKR friends and engineers claim that they are competent in project management, sufficiently understands the full nine knowledge areas and the 5-process groupings interactions? Do the engineers knows what is Critical Path Management and how to monitor and track project schedule using the CPM? If they claim they know, then why are the progress reports submitted using early-start and early-finish, and JKR had not corrected them over the decades? Do the engineers know what is contract administration and understands the rights and obligations of all the parties to the contract including the roles and responsibilities of the consultants within the contractual context? Do they know what are the duties and responsibilities of the S.O. and S.O. representatives which is to supervise the Works (note, it's capital letter which means it's not activities but the contract itself), and that the S.O. representatives are to test and examine the workmanship, materials and goods in accordance with Clause 2 and Clause 9 of PWD203 Contract Form? Did they have the structural framework in a process-flow format to test and examine the workmanship and certify the skills of the trade workers, segregating them into skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled and then draw up a monitoring and tracking system to ensure that only those certified skilled workers are allowed to perform specific tasks, that there avails a structured Quality Assurance Plan submitted by the contractor that provides adequate confidence to the S.O. and which give adequate assurance that the planned quality processes would deliver the specified outcome as per the contract specification. Does the engineer understands what is Extension of Time (EOT), that the duty of the contractor is only to serve notice of the events of delay, and that it is the S.O.'s fiduciary duty and responsibility to analyze those delay events, form his opinion (based on facts and evidence) and then grant appropriate and timely EOT within the power of Clause 43, applying the appropriate sub-clauses (and not abusing his power ,in an unreasonable way, by applying illusory sub-clause to avoid paying loss and expense which tantamount to a breach of duty) to avoid time-at-large? Do they understand variation orders and how Clause 5(d) comes into play when instructions caused contractors to suffer loss and/or expense of which it could not be contemplated at the time of tender and for which it would not be reimbursed by a payment made under any other provision in the contract? Does JKR engineer knows the implication of progress/interim payment delay by the government of which Article 4 of PWD203 states that the Government covenants to pay at the times and in the manners specified in the Conditions of Contract, and do they know what's the meaning of "Covenant" in the legal sense.

Can JKR claim that they had 80% projects completed on time, within budget and with the right quality, or 80% behind schedule, grossly overbudget because the design was inadequate and did not anticipate so many things during design stage, and upon completion there are massive defects and rectification works. Add to the woes, we have government buildings that do not have a structured maintainance framework. Apart from that, you can also observe their project performance reporting system which contains huge amount of information that are not informative. The only exception is Cawangan Jalan where Dr Wahid had developed a somewhat effective progress reporting system but which lacks continuous improvement.

We can also observe other departments such as DID, DBKL, State Council and District Offices, to see our world-class snail-pace system with lots of inefficiencies and inadequacies.

If I was to name a somewhat nearness to "world-class" government-related institution, I would pick EPF as one of them. EPF have improved much since Datuk Azlan Zainol took over the CEOship. He is a banker by profession and he certainly have changed EPF to be more prudent in their investments, introducing risk managements and crisis management, and upgrading the customer service sectors. At EPF, you can get a copy of your latest statements from a machine without the previous hassles of cuing up behind a long lines of people. You can apply for withdrawal and get paid within a week. To me, that's efficiency and improvements observed.

Do we have world-class civil service? uh! Long way to go... but we are Malaysia Boleh; so it doesn't matter for so long as our ministers said so, therefore we are.