Sheet 88
IMPROVEMENT IN THE CIVIL SERVICE - THE MALAYSIAN EFFORT
Recognizing the critical role that public administration plays in economic development, the Malaysia Government has undertaken various measures for administrative reform since the late 1980s. In addition to standard measures such as down-sizing and restructuring, Malaysia has taken the challenge to enhance the quality of its public services many steps further. This article deals with two of these service improvement measures, namely, the Client Charter and ISO 9000.
1 Client Charter
The Client Charter was introduced in 1993 with the objective of providing high quality administrative services to the general public. By this, every government agency is required to identify, in the form of a charter, the various services that it offers. For each service, the type of client, the type of service, and the qualitative and quantitative standards of the service are to be clearly documented. An example from a license issuing agency may read as follows.
Type of client ：
new license applicants, existing license holders
Type of service ：
the issuance, renewal, cancellation, etc. of various types of licenses
Quantity standard ：
number of licenses issued per month/year
Quality standard ：
time taken to process an application
The Client Charter must be prominently displayed in a location where it may be easily seen and read by the public, such as a counter window, reception room, etc. For monitoring purpose, an internal audit unit and a customer complaint counter must also be set up. By 1996, 402 government agencies had implemented the Charter.
2 The Introduction of ISO 9000 to the Public Service
In 1996, endorsing a Total Quality Management System to provide the best services for the public, the Malaysian Government set out to acquire ISO 9000 certification for all its administrative bodies by the year 2000.
Four processes were involved in the implementation of ISO 9000.
(1) The promotion of ISO 9000
A circular entitled "Guidelines for Implementing ISO 9000 within the Civil Service" was distributed to all government agencies in 1996.
(2) Training for government agencies
An awareness training course for top and middle management (1 day), and a skills training course for those directly responsible for the actual implementation of ISO 9000 were conducted.
(3) Developing and upgrading skills in consultancy and auditing An ISO 9000 unit was set up in MAMPU (Malaysian Administrative Modernization and Management Planning Unit, the coordination agency of the ISO 9000 project) to provide consultancy services to government agencies and an overall audit service.
