KINGSTON, Jamaica — The Office of the Cabinet says it is moving to strengthen policy coordination, implementation and performance monitoring across the Government as the civil service adjusts to the new demands facing the country in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa.

Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service, Audrey Sewell, in a statement said there can be no return to business as usual, with ministries, departments and agencies being required to improve how they coordinate their work and deliver results.

She made the commitment following the Cabinet Office’s annual strategic planning retreat, held in Trelawny last week under the theme, “Navigating the Fog: How to Execute When Strategy Shifts”.

The retreat brought together the executive team of the Cabinet Office, along with representatives from the Ministry of Finance and Minister with responsibility for Efficiency, Innovation and Digital Transformation, Audrey Marks.

Sewell said the impact of Hurricane Melissa has underscored the need for a more agile and responsive civil service.

“We must realise that things have changed and the civil service needs to be agile enough to deliver results in this new dispensation. The Cabinet Office has a key role to play in that,” she said.

She noted that the Cabinet Office has responsibility for whole-of-government coordination and planning and said the retreat provided an opportunity to assess where the office needs to improve and the kind of support it can provide to ministries, departments and agencies.

“A lot of people don’t realise that the Cabinet Office is a ministry by itself. We have the responsibility of whole-of-government coordination and planning. Our retreat gave us an opportunity to assess where we need to improve and what kind of support we can offer in ensuring that efficient and accountable implementation becomes the priority of all our ministries, departments and agencies,” Sewell said.

She said a major focus will be ensuring that the Cabinet receives high-quality policy submissions, while strengthening the systems used to monitor and track performance across government.

“We want to ensure that the Cabinet receives the best possible policy submissions, while also monitoring and tracking performance across ministries, departments and agencies,” she said.

Sewell said the Cabinet Support and Policy Division and the Performance Management and Evaluation Branch will have a key role to play in strengthening the Government’s approach.

“The reality is in the post-Melissa era, there is need for greater service delivery, better coordination, policy implementation and monitoring and we are going to have to redouble our efforts through our Cabinet Support and Policy Division and the Performance Management and Evaluation Branch to achieve that,” she said.

The Cabinet secretary’s comments follow similar remarks by the Prime Minister Andrew Holness as he addressed the recent retreat of the permanent secretaries board, where he stressed the need for greater collaboration across government and improved performance in the delivery of services to Jamaicans.