Two key points emerged from the Public Sector Reform Conference at the HK Convention & Exhibition Centre this week. The first is that reform is a necessity. The second is that it is a long and continuous process.

Speaking to the media after giving a presentation at the conference, Secretary for the Civil Service Joseph Wong said "the civil service must reform in order to meet the ever-increasing expectations of the community, to provide a better and better service which the community expects."

Hong Kong has started the reform process, he said.

"This year, we are tackling quite major issues such as the development of an improved pay-adjustment mechanism, which means that we will want to conduct a pay-level survey by the last quarter this year."

He said all civil-service allowances are coming under review and suggested that some of them "are probably quite out of date". Some may have to be abolished or changed, he said.

"And we'll also have to address our establishment. Do we still have some room to reduce the size of the civil-service establishment? Where are the surplus grades? How do we deal with these surplus grades? If we do not concentrate on forced redundancy at this stage, what are the voluntary schemes we should bear in mind?"

Fundamental issues must also be addressed

Mr Wong noted that the elaborate grading and ranking structure - 400 grades with over 1,000 ranks -  is a 19th century invention. "Can we survive with this structure in the 21st century?" he asked.

He also pointed to "an over-centralised civil-service system" in which every salary scale of every grade is linked to another grade.

"Most of the policies and practices are done centrally by the Civil Service Bureau. Overseas experience suggest that that is not going to be tenable in the long term. We need the flexibility. We perhaps need more devolution, more delegation, more decentralisation," he stressed.

Civil service, LegCo to be fully consulted

He told reporters that the Government may not embark on these issues in the short term as its immediate tasks are already "quite complicated, quite daunting".