Member-only story
I had an interesting conversation with a friend who was complaining about the ineffectiveness of the government’s frontline services - an officer was unable to help him with his request. As I felt he was being unnecessarily critical of Singapore’s public service (it is much worse in many other countries), I shared the following ….
In any bureaucracy, frontline services are designed to be efficiently effective. This means that they will meet the needs of 100% of all typical cases. Hence, if his case is typical, they will be able to help him.
The problem comes when a case is not typical (my guess is around 5% of the time). This is where the system jams. In this instance, the frontline officer either does not recognize that it is an atypical case and needs to escalate it or, if escalated, the authority to approve the deviation is much further up the food chain. In both instances, the citizen is unhappy.
To me, no one is to blame. This is because the system is designed to be efficiently effective, and rightly so, as the government needs to be prudent with taxpayers' monies. The key then is to have a complementary system that allows for effective efficiency in dealing with atypical cases. My sense is that the G does have the process, but as deviation often involves accountability to the public, there will be limitations and the process is necessarily cumbersome.
My suggestion to my friend is to ask for his case to be escalated upwards (if it is indeed an atypical case and he is not simply being difficult), and to understand that, ironically, the system is safeguarding his tax contributions.
