Talent Development in Civil Service

Sir, except for teachers, one out of every 10 graduate civil servant is a scholar. Many are groomed to take on top leadership roles. Many scholars are fast tracked and, in very short time periods, are parachuted into high-level and high-paying positions in the civil service. The PMO has told me that to prepare these scholars for their roles, they are given rounded exposure to the national challenges and issues facing Singapore. These include joining community attachment programmes, eg, I believe the People's Association or attachments with the voluntary welfare organisations, so that "they have a better understanding of concerns and issues faced by Singaporeans."

Sir, I submit that although this method might have worked in the past, in today's world, this old way is an inadequate way of developing talents in the civil service. I hear of a number of scholars and high potential civil servants who were assigned jobs they neither have a passion nor preparation for.

Since the Government is not yet open to the idea of scrapping the scholar programme, I urge the Government to consider doing two things in developing these talents in the civil service.

(1) Install a more structured framework of assessing the talent - what one is good at; passion - what one loves to do; and then match these profiles with the organisation's needs. Where the three areas intersect, this presents, I believe, the career sweet spot for the civil servant talent.

(2) Instead of parachuting scholars too fast into positions writing papers and advising on national policies, let them go through what normal executives go through.