Networking Important in Enhancing Public Sector Performance – Dr. Davis

Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Jamaica Civil Service, Dr. Carlton Davis, has pointed to the importance of networking in enhancing the capacity of the public sector to perform efficiently and effectively.
“It has been a factor in the successes that we have achieved in the reform process that we have been undertaking here over the last decade,” Dr. Davis said at the opening of the Points of Contact (POC) workshop yesterday (May 9) at the Sunset Jamaica Grande Resort in Ocho Rios.
He noted that while there are challenges to networking, these should not negate the importance of the process to the operations of the public sector. “Both the opportunities for networking and the challenges must be understood and overcome because they are important,” he stated.
Senior public sector representatives from Caribbean and Mediterranean countries are benefiting from the three-day meeting, which is being hosted by the Commonwealth Secretariat’s Governance and Institutional Development Division (GIDD) in collaboration with the Cabinet Office and the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) under the theme: ‘Networking for Effective Service Delivery in the Public Sector’.
Director of the GIDD, Jacqueline Wilson, told JIS News that the workshop was geared towards strengthening the roles and performance of POCs across the Commonwealth so that they could work more effectively with the GIDD.
“This meeting allows the POCs from the Caribbean and the Mediterranean region to share experiences, to learn from each other and to discover the ways in which the Commonwealth Secretariat can help countries to develop and also to hear from them how better we can serve them and how we can streamline our systems to ensure that we are more responsive to the needs of our member countries,” Mrs. Wilson said.
The expected outcomes, she noted, are to have a closer and deeper working relationship with the countries; take on board new issues that would have emerged; and develop a detailed plan of the forms of assistance for the Caribbean and Mediterranean public services that would enable the GIDD, the Commonwealth Secretariat and other organizations to provide more relevant and coordinated assistance for the success of public sector development programmes.
The meeting ends tomorrow, May 11 with presentations and demonstrations on networking and partnerships utilizing information and communications technologies (ICT).