Quality Service Managers within Government Agencies to Follow-up on Feedback Given by Public Servants
Prime Minister's OfficeSpeakers
Summary
This question concerns whether the Government will establish internal Quality Service Managers in ministries to address feedback from public servants. Member of Parliament Louis Ng Kok Kwang inquired how the service closes the feedback loop for its officers. Minister for Education Chan Chun Sing replied that agencies use surveys and townhalls to gather input and implement improvements. He noted that officers can utilize human resource divisions or the Public Service Division’s Quality Service Manager to report issues. Structured processes also allow officers to raise workplace concerns and report wrongful practices to ensure transparency.
Transcript
1 Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang asked the Prime Minister (a) whether the Government will consider having internal Quality Service Managers within Ministries and statutory boards to follow-up on feedback given by public servants; and (b) if not, how does the Government close the loop for feedback provided by public servants.
Mr Chan Chun Sing (for the Prime Minister): The Public Service proactively seeks feedback from public officers in a number of ways, including through employee engagement surveys, regular pulse surveys, and engagement sessions such as townhalls, dialogues and focus group discussions. We will take in the feedback and make improvements, or launch new interventions to address the aspirations as well as concerns of our officers. We will also communicate these through various internal communications channels both at the whole of public service, as well as at the agency levels.
Public officers can, and also do, send in feedback to agencies through their human resource divisions or existing quality service contact channels. This includes sending feedback to the quality service manager of the Public Service Division (PSD). The agencies and PSD will follow up to address and clarify their queries, or look into issues or cases surfaced by public officers. For the feedback or queries sent to PSD, we will close the loop with the officers directly, or work with their agencies to provide the responses. There are also internal processes in place at both the agency and whole of public service levels, for officers to report wrongful practices or raise workplace concerns, as well as structured processes to look into these concerns and address them.
The Public Service continues to look into new ways to engage and obtain feedback from officers, as part of our efforts to maintain a culture of transparency and constant improvement in the service.