Persistent delayed payments from Treasury, the chronic mess at land offices, and the all-too-frequent instances of corruption are indicative of one fact: The glaring lack of executive talent and managerial skills in the civil service. This fundamental flaw cannot be simply wished away through the issuance of endless edicts. And contrary to the nostalgic lament of long-retired civil servants, this is also a longstanding problem. Their selective memory notwithstanding, there never was a glorious past to the Malaysian civil service.

In the 1960s and 70s Tun Abdul Razak was similarly hamstrung by an inefficient civil service, with his many brilliant initiatives often hobbled by the bureaucracy. He overcame that with some success with his famed "Operations Room" where those desk-bound civil servants had to give oral reports and then lead him physically to those projects. Gaps between glowing official presentations and the reality on the ground would quickly become exposed. Tun's successors however, never grasped this elementary wisdom; they were satisfied simply with glossy reports.

While many applaud Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi for recently directing Treasury to expedite payments to vendors, he should go further and study why those delays occurred in the first place. Similarly instead of establishing a ponderous central committee, the prime minister should hire someone with management savvy to analyze the paper flow and procedures at land offices. If the civil service does not have the expertise, get an outside consultant. Only then would the magnitude and extent of the problems be comprehended, a first and necessary step to solving them.

In 1970 Tun Razak engaged an American expert to spruce up the civil service. To me the instructive lessons were not the professor's official recommendations, rather his personal observations on the Malaysian mandarins. For example, he was stunned to discover that the bulk of meetings of the ministries' secretaries-general the top civil servants were consumed with such trivialities as who would get prized government quarters!

Solve problems internally

On another occasion the Tun dispatched the expert to sort out delayed payments at the Treasury. Yes, it too had the same problems then. When the expert asked those exalted civil servants in this supposedly elite branch of the public service on how they would solve the problem, he received a stupefying response, "You tell us, you are the expert!" The professor had to patiently handhold these senior civil servants on how to identify and solve management problems. As an example he suggested they sort those vouchers based on their value and then analyze the denial and approval rates for each group. To their surprise, the overwhelming bulk was for payments under a certain amount, and those were routinely approved. Those vouchers could thus be paid directly by the departments without prior approval from Treasury, thus reducing substantially its workload.

The idea behind the professor's simple exercise was that they and only they could solve their problems, and not any expert imported from outside. They needed to be analytical and be well versed with modern management theories and practices.

Did those civil servants exuberantly adopt their newfound insight? Far from it! Delegating would reduce their authority and power. Besides, if they were to reduce their workload too much, they might find themselves without a job!

Civil servants behave the way they do because they are control freaks; they do not willingly give up their power. Eradicating this mindset and attitude is an essential prerequisite to reforming the civil service.

A top priority should be ending the insularity of the service; next, training civil servants in modern professional management. Streamlining the administrative procedures and making them transparent would considerably reduce the opportunities for graft, a major blight on the civil service.

Promotions within the public service are also strictly from within, with no infusion of fresh talent at the upper levels. I suggest that when a vacancy occurs for a director-general or secretary-general, hire a headhunting firm to actively seek candidates from outside. This would enhance the competition and prevent complacency. At present senior civil servants are like planes stacked up at a busy airport, each patiently waiting their turn in the grand Malay tradition of tunggu geleran. When those in the number two position know that their promotion is not automatic, they would, like Avis car rental company, "try harder."

Departmental heads behave more like sultans rather than engaged executives. They are content only with the ceremonial trappings of their office and endless speech making. They are rarely held accountable, from the fiasco of shoddily built school computer labs to the collapse of the newly built Pularek military base. Sadly, this "Sultan Syndrome" is fast becoming entrenched. Meanwhile Mampu, the unit responsible for modernizing the service, is best known for producing civil servants adept at ampu ingratiating themselves.

Handicaps of recruits

I would make as a criterion for promotion how well these managers groom fresh talent from among their subordinates. Far too often promising juniors are banished to the ulus lest they become a threat to their superiors. On the contrary, those who show executive spark should be fast tracked.

Few Malaysian civil servants have MBAs or other professional management qualifications. The Public Service Commission sends civil servants abroad for PhDs, but this is misplaced as that degree is for research, and unlike the MBA, it is not a professional qualification. Besides, the selected candidates are often way past their intellectual prime.

Recruits into the administrative service are almost exclusively local "Arts" graduates. Their English fluency and mathematical skills are abysmal. The first handicaps them from reading the vast literature on modern management, thus severely limiting their professional development. The second prevents them from making meaningful quantitative analyses of the problems they face.

These recruits also suffer from another major deficiency. Their undergraduate curriculum is very narrow; most are science illiterate. The service must actively recruit those with other than liberal arts background.

The best indicator of the caliber of Malaysian civil servants is their post retirement fate. American civil servants find ready employment in academia and the private sector. If not for the multitude of government corporations, Malaysian civil servants would be out of a job when they retire. Many rapidly sink into oblivion; the private sector has little use for their experiences or credentials.

The civil service today is essentially a Malay institution. Its failures and shortcomings are thus widely viewed as those of the Malays; hence the urgency in upgrading the institution, quite apart from its importance for the nation's development.

Unless the civil service attracts the talented, upgrade the skills of the present personnel, and then hold them to exacting standards, then expect no relief from the mediocrity.