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Thursday September 24, 2009

Rating public service

By LESTER KONG


Ensuring public service delivery remains efficient and able to fulfill the growing needs of customers is an ongoing process.

Providing effective and efficient service delivery to the nation, business sector and stakeholders is the main thrust of the public sector.

To ensure that public service delivery remains efficient, effective and able to fulfill the needs of customers and stakeholders, continuous performance appraisal and evaluation of government agencies’ performance is important.

Normah: ‘SSR aims to promote healthy competition among agencies.’

Star Rating System, better known as SSR, was introduced by former Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi on December 1, 2006 to assess the performance of the public sector agencies in implementing government policies and raising the standards of service delivery.

The Director-general of Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) Datuk Normah Md Yusof said that there are several objectives in implementing SSR.

“SSR is firstly to help the Government ensure that the public service delivery is always operating at the level of excellence.

“It is also a formal recognition for agencies that have achieved excellent level of performance in implementing their core businesses and raising their standards of service quality.

“The agency that is awarded 5 Star under SSR is also given wide publicity about its policies, strategies, and best practices, implemented” she explained.

At the same time, SSR also aims to promote healthy competition among the agencies in the public sector in ensuring better organisational management and service delivery, she said.

Normah said importance of SSR is further emphasised, from this year onward, where it is decided that only government agencies that have been awarded five Star ranking will be short listed for the coveted Prime Minister’s Quality Award.

“This change is aimed at ensuring that only high performing agencies are recognised.

“Five Stars is the highest level of rating given to agencies which comply with the requirements of the criteria, whereas, agencies that had failed to meet the set objectives were likely to be awarded with a lower level of rating.

Ismail: ‘SSR implementation has made a great impact on public service delivery.’

“Under SSR the performance marks required for achieving for 5 Stars are 90% and above. Agencies that received 49.9% or below will not receive any stars,” she said.

She said SSR is based on a set of criteria that includes organisational management, financial management, human resource management, project development management and information and communication technology management.

The other criteria include the implementation and monitoring of the agency’s core business or programmes as well as its customer relationship management to ensure focus on meeting the needs of the customers, clients and stakeholders, she said.

Normah said that in order to meet the varying needs and requirements of customers and stakeholders, SSR is constantly enhanced and improved to drive excellence in public service.

“The public service delivery system needs to change to face current challenges and the needs of the environment.

“For instance, sharing information on customer service levels through client charters and the performance of the pledges made in these charters will help the public understand better the services provided by the public sector and allowed them to provide feedback on how to improve the level of service.

“In this way the public sector can change the way it works and become more effective,” she explained.

In developing the SSR criteria, she said the views of public sector agencies are taken into account.

“Familiarisation sessions, outreach and counselling programmes are all done strategically to gain feedback from the various agencies about their level of understanding on the requirement of the criteria,” she said.

Normah said to further bolster the effectiveness of SSR, MAMPU will also be introducing an online version to enable agencies to self-evaluate on a continuous and timely basis.

Currently, self-evaluation application has been piloted at the Prime Minister’s Department and may be expanded to other ministries after an assessment is done, she said.

“SSR has been implemented currently in all ministries, 11 central agencies as well as eight front line agencies.

Khalid: ‘SSR is driving organisations to dynamically embrace improvement.’

“In 2010, the plan is to implement SSR for a further 20 agencies that have been identified according to the national key result areas (NKRA) and national key performance indicators (NKPI) announced by the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak,” she said.

She said SSR complements the Government’s current emphasis on performance through the implementation of NKRAs and NKPIs.

However, Normah said in meeting the SSR evaluation, government agencies had to keep in mind that they had to constantly adopt best practices that encourage a culture of innovation, creativity and quality in their work processes and services.

“What is important is for them to display exemplary service standards and become a benchmark in their own right for other public sector agencies”.

“SSR implementation has made a great impact on public service delivery. It creates a competitive culture and encourages benchmarking practices among public agencies.

“For JPA, the 5 Star recognition has spurred the Department to continuously improve its service delivery” said Public Service Malaysia Director General Tan Sri Ismail Adam.

“SSR is driving organisations to dynamically embrace improvement, innovation and value creation towards creating a high performance public sector through competitive evaluation system”, said Imple­mentation Coordination Unit (ICU) Director General Tan Sri Khalid Ramli.

Normah said agencies that have been evaluated under SSR have benefited immensely from the exercise.

“SSR is an integral part of the drive by MAMPU to assist public sector agencies deliver services that are outcome oriented and can contribute to the nation’s competitiveness,” she said.

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