Speeches
Speech by Mr Chan Chun Sing at Public Service Week: Spark
5 July 2023
Speech by Mr Chan Chun Sing, Minister for Education and Minister-in-charge of the Public Service, at Public Service Week: Spark, on 5 July 2023
A very good afternoon to all of you here in One Punggol, and also to the many more joining online.
New Practices
2 Perhaps this is the new format that we are all getting used to. We will now have a physical audience, and yet at the same time, it allows us to reach out online to many more in the Public Service. Just a month ago, I was doing this with the Ministry of Education (MOE). We had 1,000 plus live audience for the teachers’ conference, and we had more than 15,000 online.
3 So you see, the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us some new tricks. And I hope we locked in some of these new practices so that we don't waste the crisis. Through COVID and now going forward, I must really thank you all for your hard work over the last three years.
4 The last few years have not been easy, because all of you were running three types of operations concurrently. You are all very used to running current operations — the day-to-day work that we need to do to serve Singaporeans. Many of you are also very used to running what we call future operations, spending part of your time to think about the future so that we are ready ahead of time. These two, we have done well and will need to continue to do well. But for COVID and increasingly going forward, we will need to do a third type of operations concurrently. And that is contingency operations.
5 Tackling COVID-19 was a big contingency operation. It is now scaling down, but I will say this. Going forward, at any point in time, our Public Service must be prepared to run three types of operations concurrently — current, future and contingency. The proportion of time, effort and resources that we need to dedicate to each will vary according to circumstances. But make no mistake, we will never go back to the situation where we can either run current operations like many years ago, or we just run current and future operations, like the more recent past. If anything, we will always have to be prepared to run the three types of operations concurrently.
6 Today, I just have a short message for all of you. In fact, I just want you to remember three phrases, in six words: Remember Purpose, Forget Boundaries, Grow Yourself.
Remember Purpose
7 Remember Purpose: Why so? You all know better than me, that the world that we are living in is changing very fast. The next 50 years may not be the same as the last 50 years, where we enjoyed peace underpinned by a stable international geopolitical order, where we enjoyed free trade, where economic competition is based on relative comparative advantages, where there are stable rules of law.
8 Going forward, we will be living in a fragmenting global security. There are both challenges and yet opportunities for us to position ourselves so that we not only survive but thrive in these. As we speak now, the World Trade Organization is still paralysed, because the dispute settlement mechanism is still not functioning. That calls into question the kind of trade agreements that can be upheld internationally. More significantly, as we speak now, many countries are in fact practising protectionism in various guises. Some of it is called industrial policy. Some of it is hidden behind the guise of economic competitions with security considerations. If this is the kind of new security order that we will be in, the kind of new economic order that we will be in, we have to ask ourselves: how can we secure our place in the world; how can we earn a living?
9 But we do not need to be discouraged because we are not the only one facing all these challenges. The rest of the world is facing the same challenges. And as I always say, whoever is able to understand the new terrain, make use of the new terrain well, build it, will be the leader. And if we don't fix all these problems, as what we have seen in many other countries, increasingly there will be fractious domestic politics, competition over jobs, stagnating wages, high unemployment — particularly high youth unemployment. All these will complicate the many existing fault lines that we already have to grapple with.
10 There are also new challenges. New technologies enable us to do new things, and even old things in new ways. And once again, if we are able to master all these new technologies, these new ways of doing things, perhaps we will not only just survive, but do even better for our country. So therein lies both our challenges and opportunities.
11 In the Public Service, as we say, if you have to do current operations, future operations and contingency operations, sometimes we will get tired. But we must always remember our purpose.
12 Why are we here? We are here because we want Singapore to defy the odds of history — to not only survive but thrive. We are here because we want to build a nation that distinguishes ourselves by our cohesion, by how we lean forward to help our people as one, by how we look forward with confidence and get things done. That is what the Singapore Public Service is well known for.
13 You have heard compliments about the Singapore Public Service. One of the often-quoted compliment that always cheers me is whenever people say, if only I can borrow your Public Service for a year or so. But I always tell them this. You can borrow the Public Service for a year, but you will still not achieve the result. Because in Public Service, we don’t look at our work in terms of years, we look at it in terms of decades, in the long run. And even if you organise and you borrow the Public Service from us, you will still need to work closely with the rest of the society for us to get things done. So that's Remember Purpose.
Forget Boundaries
14 Next phrase: Forget Boundaries. If COVID has reinforced one big message for us, it is this. All the new and wicked problems that we are going to be confronted with is not going to come neatly siloed according to how we organise ourselves. The new problems that we have to confront, the new opportunities that we have to seize, don't come neatly. We cannot say this is the Ministry of Defence (MINDEF)’s problem, this is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ problem, this is the Ministry of Law’s problem.
15 COVID is a good example. We neither had the processes nor structures to handle COVID. We managed it on the fly. We invented new structures and processes. We invented new rules and regulations on the fly in order to manage it. This will likely be the new norm. Take another example today: combating scams. Is it just the Ministry of Home Affairs’ problem? Is it just the Ministry of Communications and Information’s problem? The Monetary Authority of Singapore’s problem? It is all of the above. In fact, in order to combat scams, all of us have to chip in. The strength of our defence is dependent on the weakest link.
16 Yet at the same time, there are new opportunities for us to seize — large language models, generative AI. This allows us to rethink how we do our work and what kind of work we do. But is this the sole domain of the Science and Technology Policy and Plans Office (S&TPPO), or any particular agency? It cuts across every agency, and every agency will have to take charge and spearhead different aspects of embracing these new technologies. S&TPPO came and saw me recently and asked, how should they organise themselves to embrace various new technologies? I told them this. No matter how hard S&TPPO works, it will never be able to have sufficient manpower, resources or talent to embrace the diverse new technologies that are coming up. S&TPPO as a typical example can only incubate, and once they have incubated, they must quickly pass it on to a lead agency, who must then be the mini joint headquarters to take this and run and bring the rest along. This can apply to the use of drones, AI, or other things. And that is how we need to organise ourselves.
17 Each of us henceforth going forward will have a primary responsibility within our ministry to drive the work and fulfil the mission of our respective ministry and agency. But each of us will also be tasked to lead in certain aspects, as the mini joint HQ to run and lead and bring the rest of the Public Service along. So forget boundaries. We will need to invent new products, new processes, new rules and regulations, to both seize the opportunities and overcome the challenges. So the concluding point for this is: Never use yesterday’s processes, rules and regulations for tomorrow’s challenges. Keep thinking about the new structures, new processes, new rules and regulations that we need to come up with in order for us to be prepared for tomorrow’s challenges.
Grow Yourself
18 My last point for today, is Grow Yourself. And this is the most important of my three points today. The first two you are most familiar with, because all of you have followed your past and so on to take care of our country and our people and I want to thank you all for that. But in order for you, for us, for everyone to do that, we need to remember to grow ourselves. You need to grow yourself. It is the same thing that I keep telling my 40,000 teaching force in MOE. As you pour your hearts out, you need to grow. We are all human beings. We are all living organisms. Any living organism that does not grow will wither and die. We need to grow our professional knowledge, grow our networks. And we need to have a diversity of strength for our resilience.
19 I know that many of you will want to do more, not just for your respective agencies, not just for the Public Service. Many of you have come up to us and you all want to do more beyond the Public Service, to use your capabilities and networks to benefit even more people. And that’s good. That speaks to the kind of public spirit that we have within the Public Service.
20 And that is why this year, today, we will launch the Public Service for Good Movement. We will build on what we have committed to you, where every year you can spend 40 hours on your own personal and professional development. You can now also use this 40 hours to reach out to people and organisations beyond the Public Service – to help them, to coach someone, to mentor some youths, to help another organisation – so that you continue to build your networks and widen your knowledge. And the Public Service will not just be serving ourselves. The Public Service will be serving the whole country in partnership with our many partners. So go forth, use the 40 hours either for your own personal development, organisational development, or go and do something that refreshes you, that recharges you and gives you even more meaning over and beyond what you are already doing in the Public Service.
21 In the process, we hope to develop diversity of strength for the Public Service’s resilience. In the process, we hope that you will continue to build the networks necessary for us to seize the new opportunities and overcome the challenges in future. Just as what COVID has shown us, we cannot overcome all these challenges just by our own competencies and strengths within the Public Service. We need to work in close partnership with the private sector, and with the people sector. So these 40 hours will be for you to self-determine your own learning and now your own contributions.
Conclusion
22 Last but not least, before I go off, I want to say one final thing to all of you. I know many things happened recently. Some of you might be unsure of what you must do and whether you will come under pressure, because of the public scrutiny of each and every one of your actions and our actions has been heightened and it will continue to be heightened. We will be subjected to higher scrutiny. And if we are not fortunate, some things might even be politicised.
23 But I want you to remember one thing. So long as you do your job conscientiously, do it faithfully based on your conviction, uphold your integrity, have no fear. I will make sure that I back you up. The Public Service cannot function, cannot work well, if we are always constantly afraid of what people say about us, of how people see us. I have never measured the Public Service’s efficacy on the one-year horizon, or 100-day horizon. The work that we do to build up this country ready for the future, to help fellow Singaporeans to have a better life, is a long-term goal. And so long as we do our work with conviction and integrity, have no fear that we will back you up. Have no fear. But of course, if there are things that we need to improve, we will be the first one to take ourselves to task and make sure that we improve our own processes. But I do not want you to doubt whether the heightened scrutiny will have impact on your ability to carry out your work. I want all of you to know you have our full backing to do what is right, and what is right not just for the short term, but for the long haul.
24 And finally, I end off with a story of Lim Siong Guan. Lim Siong Guan used to be our Head, Civil Service. He used to be my Permanent Secretary in MINDEF. Once, he told me success for MINDEF is when you have built up a capability, operationalised the capability, retired the capability, never have to use it, and nobody knows about it. I reflected upon it. There is a lot of wisdom in what he said for us — not just in MINDEF, but in the whole Public Service. I have never given interviews on my 100 days in any Ministry because I never believed it. Whatever we do, if in time to come, our country is in good shape, our people have a better life, we can quietly pat ourselves on the back that we have contributed our part. But never be too eager nor too afraid about the short-term accolades. We are here for the long term because we want Singapore and Singaporeans to be here for the long term.
25 Thank you once again for your contributions to our country and people. And congratulations to all the award winners today, plus many others who have contributed but may not be award winners today. Because of your effort, your constant strive to improve, we are all winners today, thanks to you.
26 Thank you very much and have a great day.