• Civil service reform

Civil service reform

Public accountability has become difficult to ensure. There are a variety of factors, often rooted in the politico-bureaucratic institutions that render accountability mechanisms largely ineffective. This article considers public accountability in Malaysia and its limitations. In particular, it focuses on the mechanisms of public accountability and their roles in theoretical and empirical terms.

The article begins with a brief overview of the Malaysia's political and administrative context. It then moves on to consider instruments and strategies of public accountability paying particular attention to performance and pitfalls. The author examines the institutional mechanisms available to enforce accountability and some contemporary initiatives and strategies that seek to promote professionalism, quality and productivity in the public service.

The author concludes that generally, public bureaucracy in Malaysia fares well when compared with its counterparts in other developing countries.  However, the present system of public accountability has been largely ineffective as it suffers from a multitude of constraints and deficiencies. While some of these constraints emanate from the unique political system of the country others reveal the institutional weaknesses and gap between theory and practice characteristic of many developing societies.

The author makes several recommendations which include:

• as the importance of good governance is more and more pronounced, attempts must be made to address the paradoxes and constraints outlines above
• efforts must be geared towards building and nurturing professionalism in the public service – for it is the key to the development of an efficient and responsive public administration
• alongside current drives, ethics should be taught at academic institutions as part of curriculum to enlighten the prospective public servants on the importance of values and morality and the negative consequences of immorality and corruption.
• more stringent screening mechanisms be introduced to ensure that only those with positive values and virtues get hired and promoted
• pay and perks in the public service should be raised to make it comparable with those in the private sector

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