Earlier this month, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said that she would consider setting up a civil service training academy in Hong Kong after visiting Civil Service College (CSC) in Singapore.
The college, established in 2001, is a statutory board under the Public Service Division. It aims to improve Singapore’s public service by strengthening public officers’ understanding and capabilities, as well as leadership skills.
The CSC believes in valuing people and integrity by upholding truth and fairness. The school offers a variety of modules, such as supervisory management, international law, organisational speech planning and strategic workforce planning.
Lam also met with Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean to discuss their views on civil service training, research and development and tertiary education.
The Singapore Public Service employs approximately 145,000 officers, slightly less than Hong Kong’s 170,000 civil servants.
The aim of setting up a centralised training centre in Hong Kong is to provide better training for the city’s civil servants, allowing them to keep up with modern developments. According to Lam, better training is especially needed in areas such as leadership, communication with the public and use of innovative technologies.
Currently, the Civil Service Training and Development Institute, under the Civil Service Bureau of Hong Kong, provides civil servants with training and development programmes, such as leadership and management, language and communication, national affairs and the Basic Law. Bureaus and departments offer additional job-specific training.
Civil servants are also provided with learning opportunities in the form of workshops, where experts of different professions share their knowledge on topics such as people management and negotiation and crisis communication.
Nonetheless, Lam hopes to improve the current facilities and programmes that are used to train civil servants.
She says that the plan to set up a civil service training academy in Hong Kong is only at the initial stage. Lam has previously discussed this issue with Joshua Law Chi-kong, Secretary for the Civil Service, who will visit Singapore at a later time.
Providing civil servants with better learning opportunities can equip them with the knowledge and skills necessary for serving the public and improving societal development. Placing an emphasis on education and training can lead to long-term advantages for both the professional development of civil servants and also society as a whole.
Aside from formal learning opportunities such as training programmes, perhaps learning based on experience and practical work-related activities will also be beneficial for improving the quality of work provided by civil servants.
This may be done through mentorship programmes for new workers, taught by their more experienced colleagues.
This article appeared in the Classified Post print edition as Back to school.
