Not long ago, the government’s Principal Permanent Secretary, while addressing a one-day conference for senior civil servants, made a swingeing attack on Malta’s public service in which he urged it to pull its socks up and to come out of its “existing leadership crisis”. He said certain aspects of the public service needed a complete overhaul: “The public sector leadership crisis must be addressed.”

The Prime Minister, who was also present at the conference, opted to adopt a more measured tone.

He focused on the need for a change to the mentality of “putting decisions on the backburner indefinitely” and also admitted that, sometimes, politicians were to blame for the faults of the civil service.

Both the Prime Minister and the Principal Permanent Secretary were right in the message they conveyed.

An efficient civil service is the motor that drives a modern State. From the most senior officials, who advise ministers and oversee the implementation of government policy, to the most junior clerk, the agents of the State are the indispensable component of governance success or failure.

I have worked closely with senior civil servants for over 40 years, almost 18 of them in Malta. When I arrived at Castille as adviser to the Prime Minister on the armed forces in 1996, I was conscious of the recent history of the civil service – a service that had had its morale and effectiveness broken by 16 years of political interference, cronyism and mismanagement and whose ranks had been depleted by the resignations of the best civil servants.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the public service in place today bears no resemblance to the ramshackle institution which it was in 1987, whose reorganisation and regeneration began in the early 1990s under the drive of the newly-elected Nationalist government.

This is why the wholesale clear-out of virtually every permanent secretary and many other key posts in the public service in March 2013 was such a retrograde act, unnecessarily repeating the mistakes that had been made in the 1970s.

My own impression of the efficiency and effectiveness of the public service over the years that I have had the privilege of working with it is that it is an institution which is, on the whole, excellent at process. Not simply ‘process’ but neutrality of process.

Civil servants are reliable, loyal, impartial and conscientious.

Most civil servants I have worked with are knowledgeable about the corner of the job they are performing. They are well organised and tend to be conservative in their approach. They bring a natural Maltese shrewdness, guile and cunning to the job. Recruits to the service are for the most part well-educated.

On the other hand, while their judgement is good, there is a distinct reluctance among too many to exercise it, to initiate and implement action. Like many bureaucracies, there is no sense of urgency or any willingness to take independent action within their own remit.

Caution is too often the watchword. They are reluctant to embrace change and new ideas. They find it difficult to exercise ‘joined-up’ government. They invariably have a very limited vision of the effects of their actions outside their own area. Turf wars are never far from the surface and lack of cooperation across ministries and departments is endemic.

Civil servants must be inculcated with the ethos of speaking truth to power – the ability to spell out clearly the consequences of particular ministerial actions

I obviously generalise as there have been many instances when civil servants have individually belied the deficiencies I have just described. The key problem is the politicisation of the public service through the introduction of strong ministerial secretariats selected by the minister personally from outside the service who act as a parallel universe and take the key decisions.

The huge influx of political advisers, who find it difficult to provide dispassionate advice based on objective evidence, has not been in the public interest. They not only undermine the primacy and impartiality of the professional civil service but also lead to all decisions having to go up to the minister for endorsement, in the process overloading the system and slowing the process of implementation.

I have also sensed that the former clear and delicate distinction between the permanent secretary being responsible solely for the administration of the department, with the minister’s role being that of deciding policy, has been eroded in many cases.

To ensure greater efficiency, the focus should be on getting the professional basics of the public service right. Too many of the basic skills are currently weak. The ability to write well in English and Maltese, the former especially, is crucial. Standards are low and many civil servants find it difficult to express themselves clearly and concisely in English.

All civil servants should be fully capable of writing a report, making a formal ministerial submission, writing minutes of a meeting, chairing a meeting. Speaking fluently and confidently in both English and Maltese is a must, given that Malta is now regularly represented at international meetings. Worthwhile advice to ministers cannot begin to be formulated unless a civil servant possesses these fundamental oral and writing skills. The ability of a civil servant to shine a searchlight on a problem, to analyse it and to propose solutions is another skill that is lacking.

But, above all, civil servants must be inculcated with the ethos of speaking truth to power – the ability to spell out clearly the consequences of particular ministerial actions. If a civil servant cannot tell a minister he or she is wrong and why, nobody can – even though in the end the civil servant has to carry out ministerial orders.

Financial processes in the public service give cause for concern, as the Principal Permanent Secretary himself highlighted, and as successive reports by the Auditor General attest. It is not clear how much the deficiencies revealed are caused by improper ministerial interference or slack financial oversight.

The reality is the processes are extremely cumbersome. Financial responsibility and accountability go to the heart of what the public service does. Not only must the system be overhauled but it must be properly taught to those who will have to implement and police it.

As to development training in the public service, in an ideal world Malta would have a ‘Civil Service Staff College’ to which all future top civil servants would go at some point in their careers to qualify them for promotion to the highest grades. The possibility of contracting out the staff college function to the University of Malta bears investigation.

I personally am a great advocate of having a ‘fast-stream’ civil service entry which would lead – through a stringent selection process – to the brightest and best progressing quickly through the ranks to the top. There is a need for a more structured recruitment and training system to attract the best talents to the public service.

The increased workload on the public service created by accession to the European Union has posed an additional challenge to Malta, which has stretched its capacity to the limits. That Malta has performed well in the corridors of Brussels is a direct reflection of the competence and hard work of the public service.

While there is, of course, always room for improvement, this country can take pride in the public service’s achievements. It is vitally important to nurture and build on this success.