High Earners In Civil Service

Terence On a typical staff trip only the minister takes first class. Even the deputy sec only takes business class.

The "top performing civil servants from other sectors eg the SAF, are also now being recruited mid-career into the admin service" are the SAFOS scholars. This is not even news. It's a longstanding fact since the 1970s. After retirement go civil service as perm sec or minister. They are given AO interview right after they come back from their overseas studies at 23 and can get into the AO at any point in time until retirement.

The thing is, the paymaster decides who are the elites unless you can show them to be wrong in their choices?

I personally think it is right to pay top money for talent, HOWEVER....the majority of those in the service have absolutely NO TALENT. They play dirty politics.

Its also a known fact that when you work with the service you must be able to cover their 'back-side'.

Take for example the recent food cases. NEA is supposed to conduct twice yearly checks on food centres, so how the @#$# did 100+ RATS end up in Geylang's hawker centre??? And have these people been collecting their MVC (ie salaries) all these years for doing nothing? And their bosses? Also didn't check.

We all know the majority of the civil servants are frankly ineffective...the terrorist escape shows a total lapse in the system...problem is if you fire these people you have nobody to work...but the question is, why aren't the directors and above fired? Even when the customer services for CPF lapsed (eg super long wait...dumb answers), why wasn't the director(s) taken to task but allowed to continue to take taxpayer's monies?

One thing you will never find in many parts of Singapore is having the heads chopped instead of the juniors. DBS's Koh Boon Hwee did a FABULOUS job in axing the senior managers. This is what I call INTEGRITY.

when u have too big a system, it tends to deviate from the original path.
when u dangle carrots to lure talents, you are bound to attract undesirable people.
when u have too big of a problem, it tends to become unstable.
when u finally realise it, ... ...

Who are the ones responsible for ENSURING the grunts are kept in line? They are the middle managers. The middle managers in the civil service and all statutory boards are also farmers which is why they are ineffective. They are also jia liao bee, and cannot make it in the private sector. They are local graduates. The farmers. Part of the hoi polloi like you and me.

There is a dire and sore lack in macro assessment, an exercise often used in consulting.

Admin Officers were not conducting checks on hawkers or guarding Mas Selamat's cell. The thing is, I know you'll say something like it flows from top down, but only policies do. Policies and culture influence operations by a very large percentage, but never 100 per cent. If so, then you would find your 17 yr old McDonald's burger flippers having the exact same character as the CEO of McDonald's.

We all know the very same group of people who complain that all organisations move away from micromanagement are the same ones expecting a perm secretary or director to keep tabs on every hawker in Singapore. Even if NEA grunts are little gods, they might still have missed the 24 hour action of food preparation of all the hawkers and restaurant chefs here.

Intellectually, I highly question the symptom some afflicted people exhibit of attributing blame of lone grunt to the top, something I've seen quite a lot recently and which I believe to be connected to envy of the powerful.

In corporate analogy, it would be akin to penalizing the late Richard Stanley if a DBS teller gave you the wrong change at the counter, causing a chain of events that led to catastrophe eg you putting in the wrong sum in a red packet to the in-laws for your wife's dowry.

It's reasonable to attribute blame to the top for overall crash of a framework, because systemic failure would have been conclusively proven. An example of this? CEOs sacked after a company crashes. Systemic crash of homeland securities is fulfilled when there is a crash of homeland security and safety, charted through crime and safety rates of the country. An example? If the crime rate soared to a level when Singapore is as safe as, say, Malaysia?

In any case, the cause of Geylang food poisoning was not 'rats' but water from raw sotong kept in the refrigerator above the rojak gravy dripped right into the bowl of gravy.

adiemuso, regarding January 20th, 2009 at 9:34 am, it must be hard for you. From all your posts, you have neither non monetary and monetary...

Last I checked, they make policies. Policy = 100 % of Operation =/= Operational lapse. Policy making sets the framework. Culture furthers shapes it. The influence is marked but not total, because it is simply not logically do-able(reread teller analogy for understanding).

Operational lapse is caused by little farmers and grunts like me. The millions of average joes like me who are not bright and whom you expect the CEO to keep in line?

So why do you always blame people like me? When I am no different from you. Do I blame you when you or your colleagues screw up at work (everyone screws up, so please don't say you haven't ever)?

are you saying no one in our government is responsible for any mistake? or are you saying that our government has not made a single mistake at all? how about the management people in charge of our sovereign funds? no mistakes at all? no one is accountable and no one needs to apologize or step down? they're all perfect?
all the faults are from the "grunts"?

I am saying the person(s) some of the above people blamed could be blamed when the conditions for systemic crash stemming from policy failure are fulfilled. If you understand the framework of organisations, you will know that policies determine direction of organisation and more microscopically the systemic outcome.

Dude Reread the following logical equations. Policy makers make policies. Policy AND culture shape framework outcome. And operations by and large. But not 100% of operations. Which means operational lapse cannot be logically attributed to a policy makers 30 rungs above the farmer.

Now back to blaming the people who keep the grunts in check. The farmers like me. The hoi polloi. The Mediocre people. I also live in HDB after I graduate from some local university. I also did not have money to buy a car until many years of working like all of you.

WHY do you blame me when no one blames you when you screw up at work? Do grunts like me screw up even as frequently as you? I bet there are tons of farmers just like me in the private sector screwing up all the time, at a rate more frequently than my hawker's sotong water dripping into the curry gravy which I 'miraculously' did not ensure my grunts caught. What to do? My grunts are not deities.

dude, in the private sector, heads roll for mistakes of similar magnitude.

dude, really? I am sure there have been instances of head roll, I did not say there never was. I know for a fact about countless screw-ups in the private sector by the grunts and farmers. The middle managers who are also HDB, local grad grunts like me also got away.

My friend's subordinate made mistakes resulting in lawyer's letter being issued to the company, a private company. The grunt and the grunt's farmer boss- the middle manager both did not suffer any repercussions even though the grunt made a very clear error. The grunt only had to make an apology over email, really easy peasy to the aggrieved party. In fact, the farmer middle manager protected the grunt.

In another notable case, the error resulted in a marked discredit to the reputation of the company and department, which often interacts with the public. The error? Was catastrophic. A factual error that was reported and certified as 'truth' and correct, and which also implicated and slandered a very prominent person outside of the organisation whose stature is high level to be in the league of MM Lee (for public sector) or Wee Cho Yaw (for private sector). The farmer-middle manager in charge of the grunt also got away.

So can you explain why farmer middle managers like me are blamed all the time? Oh sovereign funds hahaha. You tell me one fund, sovereign or very in-sovereign who did not make a loss in this crisis and then come back to me.

dude, for many "in-sovereign" funds, the fund managers have been sacked. well, mdm ho has stepped down, but "without regrets" wor...