Sugath Kulatunga

Sri Lanka Public Service (PS) is a massive organization with 1.3 million public servants in a ratio of 1to16 members of the population. It costs the government Around LKR 1 trillion annually on salaries and approximately LKR 300-400 billion annually on pensions. As a percentage of GDP Public sector expenditure represents about 10-15% of Sri Lanka’s GDP.

The largest service within the PS is the clerical service (CS), with 28,000 members which plays an important role in the PS by maintaining records and facilitating decision making. As subject clerks, they are the keepers of information.

The locus in which information is stored, analyzed, and decisions are recorded is the FILE, which is treated with reverence.

A file is like a book but with the difference that the first page of a file is the bottom/last page. On the left of a file are a few folios where minutes are recorded.  The standard procedure is when letters are received (called Tappal) the OA or the Chief Clerk distribute the mail to the relevant subject clerks.

In the olden days the subject clerks used to submit minutes quoting relevant rules and precedents and even pros and cons of a decision to be made. Most staff offifcers were over dependent on the recommendations of the subject clerks who were the jealous controllers of information leading to a tyranny of the subject clerks.

On the other hand, today most subject clerks submit files to staff officers with a perfunctory minute or the favorite submission of ‘for orders please’. At present minute sheets are not maintained, and endorsements are made on the letter received.

A popular criticism of the office procedure is that public servants are dictated to by the the contents in the ‘in-tray’.

The cyclic movement of Files are upwards for instructions and downwards for action.

In every office the daily attendance of personnel is recorded in an attendance register. Which is a farce. It is manipulated to accommodate late comers. It should be replaced with time recording machines. In city offices clock watching is a common practice towards closing times. Hardly any work is done during the last half an hour. In Colombo train times determine the office times of many public servants.

The average daily routine of many public servants is signing the attendance register, spending 10 minutes in the washroom, 20 minutes at breakfast in the canteen, another 30 minutes to browse through newspapers. These times may differ between males and females, but the fact is that they start work only after 40 to 60 minutes. There many exceptions.

The cost per hour of a public servant earning Rs 50,000 per month, works out to be

Rs 30 per hour or 50 cents per minute.

Can the public servants be blamed for this waste of time? Most of them who work in the City spend at least an hour on travel to office in jam-packed buses, perhaps standing. They do not have time in the morning to have breakfast at home. By the

time they come to office they are exhausted.

The urban travel time cannot be reduced due to traffic congestion which has no easy solution. The better answer is to decentralize the office system. There are two solutions. One is to move departments where the work is more relevant to a particular region to those regions. For example, Colombo District has no major irrigation works but this big department is located in Colombo. It can be shifted to Anuradhapura. The very large Department of Agriculture is in Peradeniya operating efficiently and effectively. This is necessary even as a measure of decentralized administration.

The second solution which becomes easier with digitalization is to establish satellite secretariats in the peripheral towns around Colombo. These can be located in towns which already have hospitals, schools and other facilities, like in Negombo, Minuwangoda, Homagama, Horana and Panadura. An example of such a possible set-up is given below. This will be a systems change to make the PS more effective and more public servant friendly.

Central Office:

1. Fiber optic line connects to a switch/router.
2. LAN devices (desktops, servers, printers) connect locally via Ethernet or Wi-Fi.
3. Satellite Office:
   • The other end of the fiber optic line connects to another switch/router.
   • LAN devices at the satellite office are integrated into the network.
4. Routing and Security:
   • A secure link (e.g., VPN or MPLS) ensures that data between the two offices is encrypted and safe.
   • IT teams might set up firewalls, VLANs, and QoS (Quality of Service) to prioritize traffic.

Where necessary CCTV cameras can also be installed for monitoring.

Sugath Kulatunga