Gov’t Developing Service Excellence Policy

Director General of the Public Sector Transformation and Modernisation Division (PSTMD), Office of the Cabinet, Veniece Pottinger-Scott, says the Government is developing a policy to address service delivery in the public sector.

She said the objective is to institutionalise standards of service excellence across Government.

Mrs. Pottinger-Scott, who was addressing a Visioning Workshop at the Jamaica Conference Centre, downtown Kingston, on Tuesday (April 25), said the proposed Service Excellence Policy will set out the core principles, values, standards, strategies, accountability mechanism, and continuous improvement frameworks that will promote and facilitate consistency in service quality.

She said that Cabinet had conducted a survey of the status of customer service in the public sector, which will provide a baseline for future evaluation of the policy, and to establish the specific issues to be addressed.

“This assessment provides both quantitative and qualitative snapshots of service experience in seven high-impact areas of Government. These are health, business facilitation, revenue collection, security, justice, agriculture and social security,” she informed.

The Director General noted that a number of workers interviewed during the assessment had acknowledged the need for changes in the service culture and had indicated their preparedness to work towards achieving this shift.

Mrs. Pottinger-Scott said the public sector has to provide value for money in its operation and better facilitate economic growth and development, in light of the changing global economy.

“The global economy is changing and the Jamaica public sector must evolve with the world and become more responsive to the needs of our citizens, providing the right services in the way they need them, when they need them and where they need them,” she pointed out.

The main objective of the Visioning Workshop was to review the state of customer service in the public sector and to agree on elements of service excellence.

More than 60 public-sector workers attended the workshop, which was organised by the PSTMD in conjunction with the Social Development Commission (SDC).