Press Releases

The Managing for Excellence (MFE) Office of the Ministry of Finance will launch a number of new initiatives to help public sector agencies attain higher levels of organisational excellence. The new initiatives will be announced by the Head of the Civil Service, Mr Lim Siong Guan on 9 Feb 2001 at the Institute of Public Administration and Management Auditorium on the occasion of the 5th PS21-MFE Forum on Organisational Excellence.

2 The MFE Office was established in Aug 1999 to help public sector agencies develop a continuous capacity for excellence. It uses national standards such as the Singapore Quality Award (SQA), Singapore Quality Class (SQC), the ISO 9000 and the People Developer Standards as the benchmarks of organisational excellence in the public sector. To date, 45 public sector agencies have achieved the ISO 9000 standard, 26 agencies have attained the People Developer Standard, 42 agencies have been SQC-certified, and one (the Housing and Development Board) has clinched the prestigious SQA.

3 One of the new initiatives by MFE Office is the launch of the SQA Online. SQA Online will be the first one-stop, virtual centre for SQA/SQC related activities in the Public Service. SQA Online will allow public sector agencies to carry out online assessments of their own "state of health" using the SQA/SQC model of business excellence. Annex 1 will provide more details on SQA Online. Annex 2 contains a write-up on two recent winners of SQC, the Customs & Excise Department and Ministry of the Environment.

4 Another initiative by MFE Office is to drive the implementation of modern management concepts and tools in public sector agencies to achieve higher levels of efficiency, cost-effectiveness and service excellence. Annexes 3 and 4 demonstrate how a judicious selection of modern management concepts and tools such as the Balanced Scorecard, Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) and project management has helped to transform the National Library Board and the Subordinate Courts. To facilitate the implementation of best management practices in the Public Service, MFE Office recently published a primer titled Building Blocks of Organisational Excellence in the Singapore Public Service. This primer looks at a number of management concepts and tools that have proven effective in transforming well-established private and public sector organisations. It also shows how these concepts/tools fit within the overall SQA/SQC model of business excellence.

Media Contact:

Donald Low
Coordinator, Managing for Excellence, Ministry of Finance
Tel: 332 7445 (O) 94561428 (Hp)

Click here to read Annex 1 to 4

MINISTRY OF FINANCE