Preface

ETHOS Issue 10, Oct 2011

This special issue of ETHOS commemorates the 10th Anniversary of the Civil Service College's establishment as a statutory board. The College has done well in the past 10 years. Today, we serve over 60,000 local participants, over 4,000 foreign ones, offer some 400 different courses and engage around 300 trainers from all around the world every year. We have much to be proud of, thanks to the untiring efforts of our staff, partners and stakeholders.

The past decade has been an unsettling one the world over; the challenges ahead of us are likely to be even more volatile and multidimensional. The question is, what must we do to build up our collective capacity as a nation to anticipate, cope and thrive in the face of such change and uncertainty? In these pages we will explore ways of approaching some of these pressing concerns. I am grateful to all our contributors for their insights and perspectives.

The Civil Service College has a key role to play in shaping a public sector that can help build a more resilient and successful Singapore. Public officers look to us to equip them with the skills needed to do a superior job, so that we may deliver superior public value. Our training courses and milestone programmes will continue to employ innovative, thoughtful and relevant methodologies and technologies. As needs and priorities evolve, we will incorporate new competencies into our curriculum.

We are also stepping up efforts to seek, understand, document and share the best in contemporary thinking about public sector practice — so that we can contribute to the dynamic development of ideas about governance, leadership and policies that can make a difference for Singapore. We want to facilitate on-going conversations among public officers and with leading thinkers and practitioners outside government, on issues that we care about. This will support more participatory, well-rounded thinking about public issues, and help broaden our shared understanding about the challenges that confront us as a nation.

In the process, we hope to help build up the sense of community, trust and common ground that the public service will need to deliver robust, holistic solutions. The best measure of our success will of course be the continuing vitality of an increasingly sophisticated Singapore, ably supported by an effective, forward-looking, first-class Public Service.

Please join us in celebrating our milestone anniversary, as we look to the future with confidence and resolve.

Lionel Yeo

Dean and CEO of the Civil Service College
and
Deputy Secretary (Development),
Public Service Division,
Prime Minister's Office