The Minister in Charge of Singapore’s Public Service says it will increasingly recruit talent from the private and people sectors, while sending its existing officers on external attachments.
Chan Chun Sing (pictured) said this was part of an overall effort to make the Public Service more agile and diverse.
Mr Chan said the end goal was “greater porosity” between the public sector and the outside world.
“It’s not a binary thing, where you are either in or out of the Public Service,” Mr Chan said.
He said that at present, the public sector was grappling with three forces.
“One is that the level of uncertainty in geopolitics, economics and society has increased with the onset of the pandemic,” the Minister said.
“Secondly, external competition has also intensified, meaning that Singapore has to re-examine its relevance to the world,” he said.
The third point was that the population was becoming more diverse not just in the traditional categories of race or religion, but also in terms of aspirations and perspectives.
“In response, the Public Service has to shore up resilience by staying agile, anticipate opportunities to keep ahead of the competition, and mobilise diversity when developing solutions, Mr Chan said.
“You never know what the next crisis might be, but this agility to reconfigure for resilience of the system is critical.”
He said that as the country geared up for a new normal, it also had to adopt a “start-up mindset” and look at how to seize opportunities before others did.
“We need to constantly think of new ideas to entrench our relevance, to not be bypassed,” Mr Chan said.
On diversity in the Public Service, the Minister noted that there was a range of talents and skill-sets in society — “the question is how do we bring them together into teams to work?”
Singapore, 9 February 2021
