Malaysia’s Civil Service Going...?

Malaysia’s civil service is undergoing change. The civil service effectively runs the government. The civil service is also the prime developer of policy. If no executive government existed, the running of government would not be affected at all. This is why many ministers are able to spend an enormous amount of time on political engagements.

The Malaysian civil service consists of around 1.6 million employees across ministries and agencies. There are around 25-40 ministries, depending upon the government in power. They are often merged and broken apart. There is a hierarchy of rank spanning some 25 levels, from director general down to peons. Public service staff and military personnel are also civil servants.

Civil servants are usually on tenured employment, once they are confirmed as permanent staff. Once confirmed, they have a lifelong career and pension at retirement.

Source:www.https://en.wikipedia.org

The civil service doesn’t represent the ethnic demographics of Malaysia. It is weighted very strongly towards one race (90% are bumiputeras). Consequently, the predominant culture and related practices and customs practiced within the civil service are Malay. In addition, with most senior civil servants domiciled in Kuala Lumpur, Shah Alam, and Putra Jaya, they tend to be urban-centric.

In the 70s, 80s and 90s the civil service was run by the Baby Boomers. Before that was a crowd trained by the British. The Baby Boomer generation, at least the senior people, studied overseas, used English as their primary language, and had a strong bond with alumni from their respective elite secondary schools. Consequently, there was much lateral communication between ministries and agencies. They witnessed Merdeka as adolescents, and generally had strong work ethic to use their knowledge and experience to serve and develop the nation.

This group has all but left the service. However, they were the group that built up the service.

Most senior positions and upper middle management are now in the hands of Gen Xers. Gen Xers also have a strong work ethic and have kept the system intact. They have tended to be more pragmatic and thus political than their former bosses. Gen Xers also thought strongly about maintaining the so called ‘Malay agenda’ and protected the civil service from straying away from an ‘unspoken’ policy or cultural norm of ensuring the service always put Malay issues first. If any policy ever came down from the executive government that infringed the ‘Malay agenda’, it would be not acted upon.

Coming into the middle ranks of the civil service are now the Gen Yers, or Millennials. The Millennials are much more IT and cloud literate. Thus, they are at the forefront of bringing systems within the civil service into the internet age. Millennials see KPIs or key performance indexes as their objectives. As long as issues and objectives are clearly defined, Millennials will work towards those goals. Ambiguity is not liked. Millennials are also products of the local education system, which slants the way they see issues. The civil service is now much more a bastion of conformity and compliance. Outspokenness is not encouraged. Creative ideas, processes and outcomes are not welcome. 

The majority of Millennials have experienced a much more intense Islamic education. Thus, the ‘Malay agenda’ has to some extent transformed into a ‘Malay-Islamic agenda’. 

Moving into the lower positions of the civil service are now the Gen Zers, after graduating from local universities. They share the same Islam-centric view of the world that the Millennials have. Gen Zers are more flexible than the Millennials. However, their personal values are much more self-centred than the generations before them. They will tend to calculate whether particular jobs and tasks will lead to promotion. They tend to be more assertive for their best interests. Within the next 5 years, the civil service will consist of around 30 percent of Gen Z employees.

There are no prizes for guessing that the majority within the civil service tend to have political sympathies towards the Islamic side of politics. The federal seat of Putra Jaya is now in the hands of Perikatan Nasional.

The concept of Madani was created to appease this leaning to Islam. There must be an element of Islam in policy for civil servants to support and get behind it.

Throw in the language issue – Malay and/or English – and the PM wants only Malay even if the private sector were to communicate with the civil service. But he also wants FDIs. Do they learn Malay and write in Malay for approvals? Or, will the private sector engage good translators as an additional cost for companies? And as for research in universities, please present any of your papers in Malay at foreign or local forums? How about international conferences in Malaysia, will foreign speakers present in Malay? Where will this stop?

We are a small, trading nation (not Japan or China) and we want to impose a one language policy in all dealings – including private sector meetings or conversations.

Today’s civil service is far below the standard of the 70s and up to the 90s (just drop the 60s). Why? They are now monolingual, insular and fixed! If Madani or Reformasi was real, the PM will want to step-up quality not the other way around. So, I see no real future for the young Malaysians who are bi or trilingual and want to contribute to nation building.

Hit the road Jack!

References:

The changing of the guard in Malaysia’s civil service, Murray Hunter, 24 October 2024

Anwar tells companies, universities to correspond with govt in Malay, Lynelle Tham, FMT, 25 October 2023