KUALA LUMPUR, May 1 ― Pemandu’s success depended on its access to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak and his regular involvement in its work, a World Bank Group report said.
The April 2017 report by the organisation headquartered in Washington DC noted that Pemandu, a unit within the Prime Minister’s Department, did not only track progress in implementation, but also actively cleared up bottlenecks between various government ministries, departments and agencies.
“These incentives work only with the regular involvement of the prime minister through routines such as the PSMs (problem solving meetings) and performance reviews.
“However, such high-level access and hands-on involvement presents its own tradeoffs, including the potential politicisation of the technical implementation process,” said the World Bank Group’s report titled “Driving Performance from the Center: Malaysia’s experience with Pemandu“.
The World Bank Group said strong leadership was required to manage such tension.
“Pemandu’s CEO Idris Jala brought in the inspirational leadership, technical skills, as well as the political and business savvy required to maintain the PM’s confidence and to carve out the financial and administrative space to build an effective unit,” said the report.
On Pemandu’s limitations, the World Bank Group said attracting talent from the private sector infused the public sector with “innovations and urgency”, but the unit was then perceived as “outsiders”.
“In addition, pay differentials tend to create resentment in civil-service. Although Pemandu has had a limited number of secondees from various public-sector institutions and hired staff with both private- and public-sector backgrounds, its corporate culture and skills have been strongly skewed toward the private sector,” said the report.
The Prime Minister’s Office announced last January that Pemandu would start transitioning its work coordinating the National Transformation Programme (NTP) to the civil service over two years and reduce its current staff strength from 133 to 45 this year and to 30 in 2018.
Under the transition process, all staff in Pemandu and Pemandu’s development consulting arm, BFR Institute, would move to Pemandu Associates Sdn Bhd, a private consultancy firm established by Pemandu management and staff.
The NTP was launched in 2010, comprising the Economic Transformation Programme and the Government Transformation Programme, to improve the government’s delivery system and to drive Malaysia towards high-income status by 2020.
