MOU between Cabinet Office and PSOJ to promote best practices

A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has been signed between the Cabinet Office and the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), to facilitate a worker exchange programme.

Under the MOU, signed in 2018, public- and private-sector employees will gain experience and implement best practices within their respective work environments.

This was noted by Principal Director, Modernisation Programme Implementation, Office of the Cabinet, Wayne O. Robertson, at a ceremony for the handover of vision and mission statements to the Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport, in Kingston, on Thursday, October 31.

“The programme entails officers from the public sector being exposed to operations in the private sector and vice versa. What we envisage is that best practices in both sectors will be shared,” he said.

A Steering Committee from the public and private sectors is being established to guide the programme, and the Terms of Reference are also being drafted.

Robertson said the initiative is one of three being implemented under the Public Sector Transformation and Modernisation Division Service Excellence Programme.

“The programme encompasses three key pillars. The first being the policy development side. We are currently in the final stage of developing a service excellence policy, which is to be brought before Cabinet by December,” he revealed.

Robertson said a second pillar is the continuous improvement component, which speaks to how public-sector institutions develop a robust programme of planning and evaluation. All Ministries have been mandated to develop customer service improvement plans.

“We need to see tangible plans that we can observe what are your key actions and the costs to execute these actions. We have also asked that the Ministers establish customer service improvement teams because the Ministries must own the process and must be custodians for the change. So, you need to monitor and provide support for internal functions,” he explained.

The Ministry of Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries (MICAF) is to be used as a pilot in the development of a customer-service-improvement plan.

The Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport is the third Ministry to receive donations of framed copies of their vision and mission statements.

Meanwhile, Minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport, Hon. Olivia Grange, said the Vision and Mission Statements, which are to be mounted at strategic points throughout the Ministry’s offices, will serve as a reminder of the important service of the public sector to national development.

“With the handing over of the Vision and Mission statements, it becomes the responsibility of every individual in this Ministry and its agencies to deliver. The efforts that are being made through the Public Sector Transformation and Modernisation Division of the Office of the Cabinet and, ultimately, the objective of this Government is service of excellence,” the Minister said.

Copies of mission and vision statements are to be handed over to the Office of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Office at a later date.

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