Ethos Issue 4, Apr 2008

Governance at the Leading Edge: Black Swans, Wild Cards, and Wicked Problems
Peter Ho

A NEW PARADIGM FOR GOVERNANCE
Our Public Service will have to assume new levels of entrepreneurship with its attendant risks and uncertainties. It will need to become expert at conducting bounded experiments. A government that explores will also, at times, have to sacrifice some degree of efficiency in service of discovery. Indeed, the complex issues of the 21st century call for a new paradigm in governance—one that is networked, innovative, exploratory and resilient in the way it confronts the challenges of our time.

Certainly the world we operate in is too complex and mutable for the people at the top to have the full expertise and all the answers to call all the shots. For us to survive and thrive, we must have horizontal reach in a networked government, and the readiness to discover and experiment, in order to gain insight, decision and action. We must take advantage of the diversity of our talent base and harness the value of new entrepreneurial and brokerage roles within the public sector.

Strategic initiatives like World•Singapore are mechanisms that involve people from different parts of the system to create a new common language, re-codify information into common insights and a shared sense of destiny. Bringing people from different agencies together to look at complex strategic issues facilitates the horizontal flow of information and the integration of experience, expertise and ideas. It defines, communicates, and reinforces our common purpose. In this way, we can better cope with uncertainty, and better operate in a complex, interconnected world.

GOVERNANCE AT THE LEADING EDGE
That Singapore is operating at the leading edge in many areas of governance means that it is no longer sufficient for our policymakers just to copy and adapt from elsewhere. As we enter a more turbulent, complex and even chaotic era, Singapore will have to evolve its own strategies and approaches to deal with the many emergent issues we will face. To achieve real breakthroughs, we will have to depend more and more on our own policy innovations.

On its own, the private sector—short on the relevant scale, reach and regulatory leverage—lacks the capacity to cope with the disruptions and discontinuities of black swans, wild cards and wicked problems. In time, a new framework of governance will be needed that spans private and public sector skill-sets. The traditional virtues of good governance must be complemented by new capabilities in managing complexity and risk. We should also resuscitate old competencies like systems engineering and strengthen existing ones like leadership and innovation. All these should be brought into the core capabilities of present and future civil servants in Singapore.

In the meantime, governments can choose either inaction—and become the de facto insurers of worst-case outcomes—or address these challenges ahead of time with the boldness, exploratory mindset and innovation of an entrepreneur. Choosing the latter approach will be critical for the Singapore Public Service as we navigate a constantly changing and inherently unpredictable future.

Mr Peter Ho is Head of the Singapore Civil Service. This article was adapted from a longer speech delivered at the Strategic Perspectives Conference on 8 April 2008. Click on the PDF icon to view the full text of his original speech.