It has been reported that between 2010 and 2017 the Jamaican Government spent over $1.4 billion on the training of 1,453 civil servants. This figure could be a conservative estimate, according to some sources. At $1.4 billion, the annual expenditure is just under $200 million, and with the approximate 1,400 civil servants trained, the expenditure per trainee is in the region of $1 million. That is a huge investment in and massive spending on training – depending on how one looks at it.

To place this expenditure in context, one needs only consider that a PhD degree at The University of the West Indies costs less than a million dollars. At the other end of the spectrum, most taxpayer-sponsored undergraduate and graduate programmes cost less than $300,000 per annum, and non-sponsored programmes cost under $500,000 per annum for full-time students and just over $200,000 per annum for part-time students. Given this comparison, the key issues that the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service must disclose are:

(a) In what areas were these 1,453 civil servants trained?

(b) Where are they currently deployed?

(c) What were the mechanisms put in place to measure the impact of the investments?

(d) How have the operations of the ministries and agencies benefited from the investments?

Wayne Jones, head of the Jamaica Civil Service Association and a deputy financial secretary in the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service, has acknowledged that there is no system in place to track the impact of expenditure on training, so we may already have the painful answer to the last two questions. But even if there is currently no mechanism in place, it is not too late to implement some mechanisms, provided that the Government can answer the first two questions.

The role of the permanent secretary

The permanent secretary is the chief of resource management and accountability in each ministry; human resource management – which consumes he single largest share of a ministry’s expenditure – must occupy the permanent secretary’s focus above all else.

As the chief accountable officer, the permanent secretary has a fiduciary obligation to ensure that all funds made available to the ministry are spent in a manner that brings value to the taxpayer. While one accepts that very often a permanent secretary’s hands are tied when it comes to the maintenance of standards, in respect of individual instances of resource deployment and accountability, there can be no plausible excuse for not having a system in place to track value for money. Among some of the hand-tying challenges to which a permanent secretary may be exposed are decisions of a minister to spend on things which bring short-term political advantage but which are not likely to have long-term positive national impact; as well as the undermining of attempts to hold accountable public servants with political ties to the party in power. These realities can sap the energy of a permanent secretary, given too the threat that if they are not seen as “cooperating” with the minister, they can be transferred or otherwise removed. I contend, nonetheless, that the threat of removal from office or other negative consequences should not deter a permanent secretary from establishing and maintaining systems for effective resource management and accountability.

At the same time, permanent secretaries must be above reproach. There are instances in which permanent secretaries, without pressure of interference from a minister, are guilty of double standards in relation to how resources are managed and accountability exercised.

The hope of public sector transformation

It will thus take the resilience of permanent secretaries in their relationship with their bosses, the minister, and resoluteness in their relationship with the employees of the ministries and agencies, in order for there to be real transformation in the public sector.

I submit that meaningful and sustainable transformation in the public sector rests on five pillars, namely:

(a) The creation and infusion of a culture of excellence

(b) The insulation of the office of permanent secretary from political interference

(c) The institution of systems of accountability right across each ministry

(d) The strengthening of a strong watchdog mechanism for reporting violations

(e) The promotion of innovation as a way of life

In today’s piece I will explore the first two pillars and in the next installment I will look at the other three.

The creation and infusion of a culture of excellence

Back in the 1990s, when I worked at the then Telecommunications of Jamaica (TOJ), while other companies were talking about TQM (Total Quality Management), TOJ was brilliantly exploring and training employees at all levels in TQC (Total Quality Culture).

What TOJ recognised was that there could be no revolution on management practices outside of a transformed and supportive environment called a culture. People’s habits towards, and beliefs about internal and external customers had to change if the decision-making processes and modes of the provision of service were to improve. How well TOJ, later Cable and Wireless, did in this regard is for a separate discussion, but the larger point I am making is that the ethos of an organisation has to be supportive of the direction an organisation wishes to take.

The Jamaica Money Market Brokers Group has a post titled ‘group executive director of culture and human development’. Donna Duncan-Scott, who holds that post, focuses a significant amount of her energy in maintaining and deepening the culture of love, respect, and accountability that the company’s late founder Joan Duncan emphasised and epitomised.

One of the principles of TQC was that “leadership must lead”; that is, they should model in their behaviours, including their approaches to decision-making and attitudes to internal customers, the kinds of standards they demand of employees. At TOJ the training in TQC began at the top with the senior executives. Very often when I do training in companies and ministries, one of the recommendations that participants make on the evaluation form is that their managers or heads of department or other senior people should be exposed to the training. This recommendation reflects a mistake many companies make, that of assuming that behaviour change is required at the bottom and not at the top.

The attainment of real reform in the public sector requires, as a first step, that permanent secretaries lead the way by showing through precept and practice, consistently, that excellence is the only acceptable standard.

Public sector transformation must be about excellence in service and results. Mergers are mere mechanisms for improved efficiencies, so training and development of staff strategies must support excellence. Unless there is an overall reorientation of staff members, aimed at motivating them to achieve and maintain excellent performance standards – not merely getting an excellent appraisal when there is no evidence of actual delivery – it is all for naught.

Excellent service means that the people who are served feel good about the quality of service they receive. A number of public sector entities have succeeded in transforming how they serve. These include the Swallowfield Examination Depot in St Andrew and the Passport, Immigration and Citizenship Agency.

The insulation of the office of permanent secretary from political interference

The post of permanent secretary is no longer ‘permanent’. The post has become very fickle, and holders are subject to removal and shifts. This practice is not unique to the current Administration. I recall one minister boldly, and seemingly boastfully, saying that if the permanent secretary does not cooperate with him he would simply report the matter to the prime minister and have the person removed. Recently a permanent secretary’s contract was not renewed and the report in the media concerning the non-renewal was that he was not “supportive of the minister”.

The model of democracy that Jamaica inherited and sought to develop post-Independence is one in which the office of the permanent secretary and that of the minister performed different but complementary roles. The permanent secretary was not conceived of, in the Westminster system of democracy, as a surrogate and instrument of the minister. The permanent secretary is an advisor who is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the ministry while the minister sets policy.

The minister, in this scheme of arrangement, has no power to tell the permanent secretary whom to employ or not to employ; whom to discipline and not to discipline, and the form of discipline to impose. It is conceivable that a minister may, in the interest of good administration of the affairs of his or her ministry, take an interest in what decisions are made as well as in satisfying himself or herself that actions taken conform to the standards of probity and fairness. But ultimately the job of “running” the ministry is vested in the permanent secretary. Those permanent secretaries who cede that authority to their ministers are derelict in their duties.

In a culture in which keeping one’s job often appears to be more important than doing a good job, the twin starting points for the transformation of the public sector are the re-acculturation of the permanent secretary for them to acquire a deeper appreciation of the principles of service excellence, organisational change, leadership, accountability, conflict management, management, monitoring and evaluation, value for money, and positional independence and cooperation. At the same time, Parliament should enact or strengthen the relevant legislation that gives security of tenure to permanent secretaries, whose removal from office should only be by death, resignation, or cause related to verifiable underperformance, malperformance, and acts of malfeasance.

We continue this discussion in Part 2.

Dr Canute Thompson is a management consultant and lecturer in educational policy, planning, and leadership at the School of Education, The University of the West Indies. He is also co-founder of the Caribbean Leadership Re-Imagination Initiative and author of three books on leadership. Send comments to the Observer or canutethompson1@gmail.com.