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Following is the speech by the Chief Executive, Mr Donald Tsang, at the Public Sector Reform Conference held in Shatin Town Hall this (November 9) afternoon:
Distinguished Guests, Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is my pleasure to join you all today.
First of all, please join me in thanking the wonderful young performers who have just raised the curtain on this conference. I saw them perform yesterday at Academy for Performing Arts. It was brilliant. Today, they have done even better.
As marvelous as they are, they did not come here simply to entertain us.
Their performance is symbolic of the significance of art to the life of our city.
The beauty of their art, built on passion and discipline, invites us to seek similar excellence in the work that we do for this city. And, of course, these young performers represent the new generation who will inherit the city from us.
Young people constantly remind us of our responsibilities. In particular, our responsibility to ensure that they continue to have the opportunity to live well amid the challenges that tomorrow will surely bring.
Working on behalf of this city entails great complexities. Each citizen and each business looks to the laws you uphold and the services you provide, to meet their needs reliably and predictably.
They expect those laws and services to conform quickly to their changing interests and requirements.
But almost any change raises contentious issues among different interests in our diverse society.
And everywhere, not just in Hong Kong, these contentions are becoming more difficult to understand and to resolve. Societies are becoming more connected, less predictable and more volatile. The fully wired community is testing the capacity of traditional institutions for public decision-making.
But most of us here today have chosen to accept the duty of public service, with all its complexities.
That duty requires us to act, although the difficulty is always in knowing how to act.
We cannot be content simply to maintain the status quo. Being a caretaker of the legacy of law and services that has come down to us is a vital part of our role. But, being a caretaker alone is not sufficient to meet the needs of our changing society, nor is it satisfactory for our own sense of propriety.
The public expects us to be craftsmen as well, helping to shape our common stock of laws and public enterprises. And the craft of a public servant is to bring greater value to our city today and open up potential for new values to be created tomorrow.
During this administration, I've had the privilege to work with many of you to craft new policies to create new values for our community.
We have helped promote partnership among community, business and government through social enterprises, and more recently through the proposal to establish a Community Care Fund, to help meet individual needs and strengthen our society as a whole.
We have worked hard on the legislation of minimum wage to better protect our lower-income working class. We are about to start a study on standard working hours to cultivate a more healthy work culture and promote work-life balance.
We have also been advocating a low carbon economy which will create jobs and will help ensure that we and our children will be able to carry on living hopeful lives here in Hong Kong.
New initiatives like these have positive long-term implications for our community for many years to come.
By engaging in such creative work we fulfill our responsibility to the community we serve. Our reward is personal satisfaction. To do this we need to innovate through our staff, in our culture and in the structure of our organizations. These underpin the quality of policy development and the effectiveness of programme delivery.
However, I am acutely aware that like me, the daily reality of our work is the hard grind of sustaining and enhancing existing services, amid a welter of questions, complaints, contention and unexpected contingencies.
Finding the time and the energy even to look ahead is not easy. Developing and persisting with efforts at reform is not easy. But it is imperative that we do so. And we must realize that we are often in the best position to instigate changes, however incremental they may be. We have to keep asking ourselves the some key questions. Is my organization looking outwards to the needs and aspirations of the community? Are we engaging effectively with the community to develop ideas and build understanding and support for them? Are we gathering and using trustworthy and relevant information on which to advance public reason and discourse?
I have never accepted the facile propaganda that government is the cause of the problems for society and for business. Nor do I accept that the solution is a simplistic equation of less government and more free markets.
Society and markets both need a common framework of laws and services within which to operate. That framework is provided through the operation of government and sustained by the institutions of public service.
It is vital, therefore, that as public servants we seek to do our work well. We must establish decent laws and fair programmes, and administer them impartially and efficiently. We must use our experience, judgement and craftsmanship to help sustain new generations as they grapple with new conditions.
It is our duty to engage with the community in dialogue. That's why it is so important for us to go direct to the community, to talk to stakeholders, to use media, language, images and concepts that connect with all the changing patterns of our society. Not long ago my office have launched an official facebook page. The response has been encouraging. I have read opinions and suggestions that I am sure would not have been conveyed to us through other traditional channels. Insults, abuse. But also suggestions and creative ideas. This is a rich source which I resort to every day. And my team is now able to convey our messages directly to the citizens in an efficient manner.
Through dialogue we might find that our assumptions, attitudes and habits ¡ª whether personal or organisational ¡ª are a cause of frustration and may need adjustment. On issues such as healthcare financing and the West Kowloon development, we have made adjustments after wide consultation. I believe the revised schemes are in the best interest of society and align with public sentiments.
If we fear to make change because of what incorrigible critics may say, we rob ourselves of the power to act. We deprive ourselves of the satisfaction of public service.
We also undermine the right to ask that others reflect on their assumptions and opinions, and accept their mutual responsibility for change. Unless we adopt that attitude, how can we expect others to change their own attitude?
Failure to exercise our responsibility to reform where reform is due, weakens the capacity of our society to weather shifts in social, economic and environmental conditions. Readiness to reform, on the other hand, helps to build and retain public trust in the public service.
Ladies and gentlemen, you and I know, reform is never easy.
There is never a perfect time or perfect environment for reform. But, we have a responsibility to our generation, to those who have gone before us, and to future generations, to pass on a public service that is lively, modern and creative.
Crucial to that, I think, is harnessing our knowledge and our commitment, through the connectivity of new technology, to create an institution that is an effective whole, not simply a collection of discrete parts; to create an institution that can serve each citizen as a unique, respected member of the community.
As our young performers reminded us earlier ¡ª we are responsible for a public sector that nurtures creativity, dynamism and cultural diversity throughout the community. This is the foundation upon which our city can continue to flourish.
I do not have the benefit of a "crystal ball" with which to see Hong Kong in the year 2020. But I do know that Hong Kong has an extremely bright future.
I know that it will not be all plain sailing in the next decade. But I have every confidence that, in 2020, Hong Kong will have, as it has today, a government committed to serving, enriched by civil servants working tirelessly on behalf of their fellow citizens.
Together let us carve and maintain a path along which a hopeful, creative and resilient society can travel.
Thank you very much.
Ends/Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Issued at HKT 16:25
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