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A New Public Service In the Making

Contact: Rose Marie Harris

Friday, May 24, 2002 - Updating the governing legislation and regulations which guide the operations of the Public Service is just one of the recommendations coming from a two-day retreat for cabinet ministers and senior public servants. It was the first time that these two groups were meeting in such a forum. The aim of the retreat was to provide an opportunity for reflection and to examine the major issues impacting on the performance of government.

According to Cabinet Secretary, Victor Poyotte, “There were…proposals for policy changes, structural changes as well came up and the Ministry of the Public Service is one of the targeted ministries for public sector reform and we are thinking of a management audit to look at the operations of the Ministry of the Public Service. Of course we will also be looking at the Ministry of Planning which is another ministry targeted for reform. But one of the additional activities which was identified was the need for process business re-engineering in terms of looking at our processes in the various line ministries, to avoid the bottlenecks, to streamline some of the activities because it is recognised that there are too many steps in our decision making processes so in the targeted ministries we will be doing that”.

Yet another recommendation is the need to strengthen the public service’s planning processes in an effort to increase the rate of implementation of a number of projects. Poyotte said that this was a major area of concern to the participants and that “one of the recommendations as far as this is concerned is to look at what has happened in a number of countries in terms of best practice that is to compare and use it as a guide for improving our efforts in public sector reform”.

An Action Plan will soon be presented to the committee of permanent secretaries for review and then to the cabinet of ministers for endorsement. The Action Plan will then be presented to the joint group of participants with further assistance from Dr. Frost from the Commonwealth Secretariat. The Commonwealth Secretariat assisted the Saint Lucia Government in planning and implementing the two-day exercise.

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