While crunching research to draft speeches, I came across a really familiar spine-chilling efficiency fact about the Singapore Public Service.
"(Paragraph 18.) Let me give you one example. These are the Duck and Hippo Tours. You know what's a Duck Tour? It's a boat with wheels where you take a ride, you go into the harbour, you sail around, you come back. The Duck took two years to get a licence -- nearly died. Very difficult because they went to the LTA (Land Transport Authority). LTA says, "Your duck has a propeller, how can it be a car?" They went to the MPA (Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore). MPA says, "Your duck has wheels!" So, ding-dong, it took two years. Eventually, we sorted the problem. The Duck became a success.
So, came the Hippo. The Hippo is a bus with no top, okay? So, you sit on top, you drive around. It's just like in London or one of the other Western cities. Question -- Is the Hippo a bus? A very important question because if it is not a bus, it is not allowed to stop at a bus-stop. So, that one we did better. Six months, we solved the problem. I think we have to do better than that."
- extracted from PM Lee's National Day Rally Speech, Sunday 22 August 2004, at University Cultural Centre, NUS.
So, on 4 September 2004, at LTA's dinner & dance, Mr Michael Lim (then Chairman of LTA) responded to PM Lee's comments with:
"So what is the full story behind the Ducky? We took about two months to give approval to the Duck Tour operator to allow him to operate the vehicle as a bus. We could be more expeditious if we had tried harder. Then for about a year and a half, the Duck got entangled in water full of weeds trying to secure approval from the various government agencies including MPA, URA, NParks, SLA and even the Traffic Police. In order to get to the water, it has to traverse from roads to cross state land, park land and beach front. Eventually the tour was launched in May 2002, but it was only 4 months later in September that the operator had approval to carry full load.Learning from this experience, the Hippo Tour was given approval in just six months. So we have improved the second time round."
This is our government's definition of improvement in 2004. It raised a stink then. Today, there doesn't seem to have been much improvement.
I don't think we've done better than last year.
Just look at URA's recent S$400,000 useless branding exercise for Marina Bay.
And don't forget LTA's engagement of an American public relations firm to find out what people thought of LTA after the Nicoll Highway collapse. That image survey reportedly cost come S$250,000.
What happened to common sense? Why didn't the senior management just take cabs and chat with cab drivers? Or sit at the kopitiams? That would have just cost them peanuts. If we know bureaucracy to be still very much top down, then the bosses are obviously living in ivory towers.
I wonder if PM Lee will do another exposé of bureaucratic efficiency this year.
11 comments:
i can see you're having a bad day at work!
bureaucracy has ceased to be simply a noun. it is an adjective and an adverb.
classic, woman, classic. i'm sure there're many more examples, one of which is "it has always been done this way". no original thought. thought leadership is non-existent here. imagine MICA embarking on a Creativity Drive. since when can creativity be taught?!
oi!we plebians.how can we ever aspire to even understand the lofty ivory arguments for the pros and cons of approving anything?? after all, ivory tinkles..
you mind? don't remind me of the idiocy that we have to contend with everywhere. check out the counter staff not exchanging soft drink for mineral water even though it's the same price. reason cited: management policy. WTF!!!
deep thoughts for one so young. isn't your hair turning white yet?
stupidity abound.
LOL - this made me crack up.
i'm sure you guys can imagine that i deal with these sort of stuff every other hour. shocking i tell you. absolutely shocking.
and yes,i do have white hair. 4 strands at last count. i had to snip it off with scissors because some dodo told me that pulling out 1 will injure the surrounding follicles. so pull out 1 = 3 new ones. man. okay. point taken.
i'd imagine the questions raised in the discussion of the approval for both Duck and Hippo to be really relevant. i mean, we're talking about running a whole damn country here!! not whether to put brown or white sugar into the coffee.
you must understand that the impact of anything approved will be enormous. it is supposed to be mindset changing and set off the creativity alarm all around.
i seem to recall that any breakthrough or changes are termed as 'thought leadership'.
hi david from baltimore, our govt was trying to emulate other cities.so what if the big boss gives orders? the little bug trying to carrying out the orders gets squashed by all other bugs around. i'm sure bureaucracy exists everywhere. it's only a matter of how many layers there might be. in singapore's case, it's really classic stupidty.
Post a Comment