It's very sad that MAS is trying to do so many new things but is unwilling to hire additional staff. Instead, they simply dump it on the existing staff and ask them to handle it.

The management needs to understand that we are not the Bank of England. It cannot expect us to be producing cutting-edge work when we don't have the same amount of resources or expertise.

Worst is that many of the bosses do not even understand how difficult their requests are. Why don't you do this? Why don't you do that?

Yes, it is easy to make such requests. But have they considered operationally how it is supposed to be done? Whose responsibility is it? How should the work be divided? Is it better if we outsource this to a third party? Do our existing staff have enough resources to cope? Should we actually hire personnel who are experienced in this rather than asking our staff to handle something they have not done before?

In many cases, unfortunately, bosses are only capable of "big picture" ideas, which I believe any MAS officer is also capable of. It is not hard to dream. In terms of delivery though, this is where they completely fall short. There is a remarkable lack of awareness on constraints, believing that any constraint can somehow be solved. Or even if they are aware of the constraints, they do not want to think about it deeply, hoping that by delegating it to someone, that person can miraculously complete the task without any fuss.

Thus, what usually happens is that the person tasked with the additonal responsibilities:
1) Is already packed to the brim with existing work.
2) Has no idea about the additional responsibilities.
3) Being Singaporean, is too afraid to reject the new task.

He thus makes a half-hearted attempt trying to contact a few people who might know about the new task. If he is lucky, he gets a reply because other people are also busy with their own work. If he is unlucky, he gets no reply. But, he also does not want to follow-up because he is also busy and has to spend his time on his core responsibilities.

Thus, this issue just lingers on and on until the staff either leaves MAS or the boss is absorbed is some other new idea and forgets about the issue. After wasting everyone's time over months/years, it becomes apparent that this issue was not really important in the first place. This cycle then repeats itself with other issues.

The other major central banks are much more focused. When they want to do something, they are willing to commit the necessary resources to do it, even if there is no guarantee of success. They accept as a core principle that if you decide to do something, you put your best foot forward. MAS, on the other hand, loves to pussyfoot around issues and naively hopes that everything will somehow turn out well in the end. Quite sad in my opinion.