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• Speech at the CAPAM 10th Anniversary Biennial Conference

Speech at the CAPAM 10th Anniversary Biennial Conference

Date: 24 Oct 2004
Speaker: Secretary-General McKinnon
Location: Shangri-la Hotel , Singapore

Honourable Prime Minister, Mr Lee Hsien Loong
Honourable Minister of Defence and Minister in Charge of the Civil Service, Mr Teo Chee Hean
Honourable Jocelyne Bourgon, President of CAPAM
Excellencies
Distinguished delegates

It is a great honour and pleasure to be here in Singapore . This must surely be one of the most vibrant cities in the world - and one of the most successful growth stories of any small state in the world at least over the last hundred years. Certainly, I have appreciated being able to visit here again to meet the Prime Minister and others in the Government, and to talk about the relationship between Singapore and the Commonwealth - a relationship we value very highly.

The papers have been reporting recently that Singapore 's economy has been going through a bit of a slow-down in the last few quarters, although a slow-down in this context is obviously relative. In Singapore , a growth rate of 5% is sometimes called a recession! It is quite clear that the lion of the Singapore economy is still roaring.

And I think we can all be sure that Singapore will rapidly adjust to changed circumstances, take an innovative approach, and move forward positively again under a new generation of leadership. It's that sort of thinking and approach I want to talk about with you today.

It is also a particular pleasure to be here to celebrate CAPAM's tenth anniversary. When Jocelyne Bourgon invited me, I was quick to accept because I very much wanted to be part of this event. Ten years is a very respectable length of time for any organisation. The Commonwealth Secretariat is in fact turning 40 next year, and we have treated each decade as a milestone.

And milestones like these are an opportunity not only to celebrate but also to be a bit reflective, to take stock. What has been achieved? How has the context changed? What new challenges have emerged? Where do we go next?

So let's start by going back briefly to 1991. It was, of course, a significant turning point for the Commonwealth. Heads of Government agreed that year to the Harare Declaration. It built on an existing declaration about what our organisation stood for - one that had been made, in fact, in this very city 20 years earlier: the Singapore Declaration of 1971.

The Harare Declaration says, in broad terms, that we stand or fall together in our ability to promote and uphold certain principles: of democracy, of the rule of law, of good governance, of fundamental human rights, the equality of all human kind, and of sustainable development.

At the heart of the Harare Declaration is the recognition that development is a people-centred process whose ultimate goal must be the improvement of the human condition. Participation and empowerment of individuals, groups, and communities, is therefore a touchstone for Commonwealth programmes.

And we achieve that through a broad, varied and very active network of professional and non-governmental organisations. The Commonwealth is a global forum for discussion, for dialogue, for aspiring to influence from positions of principle, and for forging consensus around practical action.

But 1991 was also noteworthy because of the other decision by Commonwealth Heads of Government at Harare , that being to endorse the creation of CAPAM, leading to its launch three year later in 1994.

CAPAM's primary mandate at that time, as you well know, was (and I quote), "…to enhance Commonwealth co-operation for improving managerial competence and organisational excellence in government" (unquote). I think all of you who have worked so hard for CAPAM since its inception have successfully kept loyal to that mandate.

And I don't want to let this moment go by without acknowledging the role played by Gordon Draper who sadly passed away a few months ago. Gordon was one of the people who made CAPAM happen, made it relevant, and made it a success. He also served with us in the Secretariat, where he was our Change Manager. Change is never easy, and it is a testament to Gordon's personality and professional skills that he was able to lead change in such a diverse organisation in such a positive way. Gordon is missed by us all. He is remembered with deep appreciation, admiration, respect, and affection.

It has been proposed by the host government, Malta, that the 2005 CHOGM theme be, "Networking the Commonwealth for Development". And so I can not think of anything more appropriate as the theme for CAPAM this year than your choice of, "Networked Government".

Of course, much has happened in the time since CAPAM was conceived to get us to the point where we so easily use the word, "networked".

Back then, we were confronted with the last spasms of the Cold War and the outbreak of the first Gulf War. We were trying to finalise the Uruguay Trade Round - a long way from today's Round and a long way from considering the importance of a development dividend. Back then, "globalisation" was not a household term.

Since then, the Commonwealth has come a long way in promoting democracy, accountability, transparency and good governance. We have put our flag on the mast of democracy and development - a recognition that the two are fundamentally linked and mutually reinforcing.

We have also made greater use of modern technologies to advance our Commonwealth objectives.

But a word of caution. Even if we have worked to exploit it fully, we have not yet exploited it to the full. And that is for the very simple reason that most Commonwealth citizens do not have ready access to a PC or the internet. It remains the case that it is easy to communicate from your hotel room here in Singapore with a colleague in Sydney or Suva , but harder with a colleague in Maputo or Funafuti .

It is universally acknowledged that efficient public services are central to good governance and sustainable development. But the 1970s and 1980s saw an acceptance that public service performance improvements could not simply be purchased. The evidence of those decades suggested that there was no clear linear relationship between the financial inputs into the public service, and the quality and quantity of the services provided. We had to work at it!

While CAPAM was one response, we too have continued our efforts in the Commonwealth Secretariat. Our Governance and Institutional Development Division (or GIDD) whose primary focus is public sector development, works in some 30 member countries. Through GIDD, we have strengthened public oversight institutions, including ombudsman offices, human rights bodies, anti-corruption agencies, the office of the Auditor-General, Parliamentary committees and consumer protection instruments.

Let me draw your attention to one of our activities coinciding with your theme: E-Government. Our Public Sector Informatics Programme has focused on 'e-government for good governance', under which a National e-Government Masterplan for Mauritius was prepared, as well as a similar plan for Lesotho 's education sector.

Both projects defined a roadmap to e-government, delivered a 'bankable' product which those countries should be able to implement through bilateral or multilateral donor partnerships, and developed a toolkit that can be adapted for other countries. CAPAM has played a valuable role as our partner in much of our Secretariat work.

But we can never sit down and say the work is done. We must always look at how to do things better. Better for the taxpayer.

So this leads me to raise three brief points about the way in which the public service has evolved over the years, and our responses to that change too.

The first concerns the level of service that is expected from the public sector. The true costs of the public service are rarely known and almost never appreciated fully. And in such circumstances, there is no price sensitivity. We all expect a certain level of public service to be readily available, almost on every street corner. It seems to me that there is fertile ground here for public debate.

The second point is that public servants - be they national or international - need perhaps to be reminded at times that they are there to serve the public rather than themselves. It's an easy trap to fall into.

I am aware that public sector managers look with envy at the remuneration packages of their private sector counterparts. This recalls the comment made by that great economist, J.K. Galbraith, who said:

'The salary of the CEO of the large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is more frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.'

The third is that we are now needing to respond in a situation where the emphasis has shifted from public to service. The time when services to citizens had, as an almost sacrosanct principle, to be delivered by civil servants paid from government coffers has long gone. Many countries now use the private sector. The concept of public-private partnership has also caught on in a big way. Public service, therefore, is no longer the preserve of the public sector.

Speaking to you as someone who was a Minister for the whole of the 1990s in a Government that presided over some very significant public sector reforms - and I am referring here to a raft of changes in New Zealand at that time to public science, education, retirement income and the public service itself - I am left wondering whether it was all worthwhile.

The OECD tends often to be the judge of such matters, and the jury was out for quite a while in Paris . But the general conclusion to emerge in the last year or so seems to be that for a small and geographically isolated country like New Zealand , the returns were not as great as the experts had predicted, but they were nevertheless still pretty good.

It's interesting, too, that even the World Bank has come to conclude that the policy of encouraging developing states to sell off State assets to the private sector - a key policy plank a decade or so ago - is now recognised as not always being in the best interests of those states.

Does this all suggest that we were wrong then or that we have now, almost half way into the first decade of the 21 st Century somehow become more enlightened? I don't think so. In the public sector, as in politics, there is a sort of pendulum. And some times one swings to the extremes and some times the movement in ideas and policies is less dramatic and closer to the middle ground.

But where are we now? Probably there is no one answer, be it the application of a pure business model or a pure mid-20 th Century public service model. Personally, I think there is adequate room in the delivery of public services for both the public and private sectors together.

My interest, though, is how to apply such concepts to the Commonwealth. Are there innovative or fresh ways of thinking about them where we can give a lead, or give our member countries the chance of a comparative advantage?

Take Outsourcing. It is already the case that many governments - especially in small states - are unable to bear the cost burden of providing a full health service to their people. In such cases, it is accepted practice to send those in need of specialised treatment off-shore to another country which does have the facilities. How much thought has been given to sharing or pooling such core public services?

I do not think it beyond the realms of reason to consider a collection of small island states, for instance, collectively sharing a single banking and payment facility at a central point - rather like a hub and spokes - for the payment of public servants' pay. This would not diminish the sovereignty of an individual state, nor diminish its responsibility to make the necessary payments. But, if designed properly and with enough participants, it could reduce administrative costs, not to mention compliance, banking and auditing costs.

Another is the idea of shared public resources. It is interesting that many EU countries are now moving to share common building space for their diplomatic missions abroad. If done properly, there is no loss of sovereignty - perceived or real. But there are tremendous potential economies of scale.

Again, small states who account for two thirds of the Commonwealth's membership can stand to gain. We already have an early model of this with our Commonwealth Small States Office in New York where ten small states have located their Permanent Missions to the UN. Some commonly shared public health facilities is another possibility.

My point in all this is to say that we need to keep challenging existing concepts and practices in the public service. The Commonwealth is known for its promotion of good governance and best practice. I believe it also has the capacity and people to think outside the square, to think laterally, to think creatively, to lead…and nowhere more so than in the public service where we have so many common threads and collective experience, and CAPAM itself.

Let me make that your challenge at this conference. Singapore has adapted, adjusted and updated. The Commonwealth more broadly has done the same over the years. I encourage CAPAM to do likewise over the next 10 years and beyond.

Thank you.

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