Quote:
Originally Posted by Unregistered
LD is there to protect MAS from reputations damage, not to pander to zealous TLs and bosses who just want to whack just to feel shiok and meet KPi |
Oh yes. Some points below -
1. Public authority and its officers can only act within powers allowed by statute or other guidelines
The mandate of
MAS is set out in
MAS Act, section 4. Yes regulator should have radar on emerging risks and moral suasion can complement in absence of hard law. But the powers of
MAS, like other statutory board and public authorities, is ultimately circumscribed by what legislation allows. For HR matters, most
MAS HR guidelines mirror government IM which clearly sets out processes that are expected to be followed. So it’s entirely responsible for LD to point out course of action that falls outside of these powers as it may subsequently expose
MAS to reputational and other risks.
2. Competencies
If the poster take time to get to know LD officers, many of them have experience from private sector, in house counsel, other public sector agencies. Yes they may not be CFA or CA, but it is not the expectation for
MAS officers to have these professional finance qualifications either. I do not think there is very adequate or intentional department-specific training for
MAS officers and we are expected to pick up specialised knowledge on the job (direct transfer from other colleagues rather than accessible industry standard databases) after being thrown into the role. So ironically, I have learnt more about financial regulations and concepts from LD advice to my and other departments, and some courses curated by ACA.
3. Bad form to disparage another department through public statement
This forum been around for some years le. The clown who post at 1 August 7.45pm to kao peh about LD is the first complaint I seen about LD competency being questioned here and IRL. I have spent quite a lot of time listening to other colleagues from other
MAS departments kao peh IRL, and LD is not one of the usual departments colleagues kao peh about.
As far as I’m aware, the LD HOD enjoys an excellent reputation among his own staff, ex-staff and other
MAS employees. Usually request for advice go to him first then assigned to his officers. So if the poster got problem with LD officers or standard of their advice, it is sensible to first go to the HOD substantiating their complaint. Then he can see how to rectify. What purpose does it serve to make anonymous public statement disparaging LD while purporting to speak on behalf of “many
MAS officers serving reg functions”?
4. Legal does serve gatekeeping function
If poster feel they got no standing to go direct to HOD (even though most find him v very approachable), they can also send feedback through their own departments as GC sits on some management committees which oversee important decisions (this gatekeeping function is no different from in-house lawyers at other large companies).
5. Turnaround time of “months” is far from uncommon in
MAS
There have been occasions in my experience when LD have to move their hands and legs very fast to mitigate delay by departments sitting on matters until the last minute (even when there is hard external deadline). In such cases usually all departments just cooperate as best as possible to push through the deadline without pointing fingers at who is to blame for the delay. So it’s laughable on so many fronts that poster kao peh about LD “take months to conjure up a rather scant advice” where there are ample examples of other departments taking months or even years to revert between themselves or to the public. (It is especially objectionable when one team/dept sit on matter for weeks/months then give others a very short turnaround of days to revert with input)
One of many examples of delay is the perplexing turnaround time for consultation responses from some departments/groups (even when the subject of the consultation does not seem particularly high in priority of systemic importance). This is not the only example of delay but it is one that public can track. The department tracking the list of late consultation responses should assess if there is any pattern of where the longest delays originate from, and whether it points to any systemic root causes. Identifying contributing flaws in the system (eg. Insufficient headcount taking on too many projects on top of core work) rather than chasing down individual officers is important - because one would think one only has moral standing to castigate another for delay if there are no other examples of habitual delay in the organisation.
Examples of habitual delay I have witnessed: - 1. Sitting for months on draft prepared by subordinate and cleared at least one layer 2. Regularly arriving late to office hours after HR start time 3. Turning up late for management meetings after own bosses already arrived punctually and seated 4. Not being contactable at public service start work time (8.30-9.30am) due to working and sleeping late the night before (for the record, many
MAS senior management also work late into the night but they still resume work by 9-9.30am or earlier). Individual incidents of lateness may be explained away but taken collectively, if you worked in such an environment where you witnessed habitual lateness from whom you thought were standard-bearers for
MAS values, what message about timeliness and accountability would you takeaway about
MAS?
Back to the post on LD - I personally feel embarrassed to see an
MAS officer making public statements about another department that are at best imbalanced. This seems to be different from the other comments on this thread as it is a very pointed comment targeted at an identifiable group which does not appear to be fair or balanced. I can only ponder if the intent of the writer was to lower LD’s reputation in the eyes of others.
