From: [email protected] (The Void Deck)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.singapore
Subject: New Mindsets or New Set Minds?
NNTP-Posting-Host: 203.198.44.101
The last few days we see what seems like a new approach to
civil
servants, the call to Think and the call to be Creative. These
words
have been repeated first from the Minsta of Def and followed
quickly
by the head of the Civil Service, Lim Siong Guan.
Lets analyse how the call was done and how the call was
implemented.
First, in CNY, PM Goh and DPM starts calling on people to act
like
monkeys, be nimble, be entrepeneurial blah blah blah. This call
is
than similarly made by our PM-elect in speeches on how to
improve
ourselves, rem-make Singapore etc etc. Than comes the recent
clarion
call by Minsta Def and finally our head of civil service gets the
hint
and issues his call.
What does the Head of Civil Service do? He sets up this
inter-ministry
group that will make its study. This group is headed by him and
they
will report to our PM-elect. Than the differences and the new
approaches will be evaluated and than the changes will come.
How different and how trendsettingly path-breaking is this approach
to
calling for a New Mindset? Zilch. If you study the Remaking
Singapore
process, the SARs thing, the changes in our Educational system,
the
changes in Min of Def ... all goes through the same pattern.
Politician gets into some flak, calls a committee/study
group/focus
committee etc etc, which will than study and make recommendations.
The
people involved in these initiatives are born and moulded by
the
system which they are supposed to break out of. How likely is
that
gonna happen? Remaking Singapore is one good example.
The example of Ngiam How Tong, the retired civil servant making
alot
waves recently with his pointed critiques of the Government,
is
indicative of the syndrome which I am describing. His credibility
as a
critic falters exactly because he seemed to have grown some
brains
AFTER he retired also can be read as out of the system. Having
your
most brilliant civil servant recast mindsets is oxymoronic.
His
brilliance rests on the simple premise that he has the most Set
Mind
hence, his success in the system. Hoe can he change the
mindset?
A smaller point but equally pressing question if we can think
about
change : Where are the opaque markers which shade government
policy-making and cast mindsets into a certain mold? Are these
opaque
markers gonna go? Are we gonna have New Mindsets or New Set
Minds?
Zhong Eh
03.04.04
www.thevoiddeck.org