Since the launch of our 5-Year Strategic Plan, Civil Servants have worked diligently to lay a foundation that will ensure that a world-class culture is embedded across the Civil Service. Similarly, significant work has been undertaken to progress the Government’s eight Broad Strategic Outcomes. The important work carried out under both strategic initiatives will benefit Civil Servants, citizens and visitors alike by improving the quality of services and life in the Cayman Islands.

In 2019, we saw many noteworthy accomplishments in this respect and I am proud to share these with you in the Portfolio of the Civil Service’s (PoCS) 2019 Annual Report.

To move the Civil Service toward its goal of delivering an outstanding customer experience, we trained 716 Customer Service Ambassadors and 117 Customer Service Champions through our newly established Customer Service Academy.

To measure customer satisfaction, we continued to deploy our “Happy or Not” terminals across the Civil Service, which captured a total of 347,405 responses in 2019 and revealed an overall happiness rating of 94%. These results include responses that were captured in departments where Civil Service priorities, such as protecting our borders, must be balanced with providing outstanding customer service. Yet, despite having to manage this balance daily, our overall rating is 6% shy of 100.

Of equal importance is the engagement and satisfaction of our staff. In 2019, 2,976 (74%) of our staff took the staff engagement survey and we achieved an engagement index of 70%. This is on par or better than some of the best Civil Services in the world. However, the survey result that I am most pleased to see is that 85% of survey participants said they were proud to be a Civil Servant.

In 2019, the Civil Service delivered world-class results in some key areas:

In our effort to improve the delivery of projects, the Strategic Reforms Implementation Unit revised business case templates used by the Welsh Government and throughout Europe to better fit the needs of the Cayman Islands Government (CIG). Our templates were of such high quality that they were adopted by the Better Business Case Programme and are now published on the website of the Welsh Government.

To further the development of exceptional leadership, PoCS’ Management Support Unit distilled key concepts into a succinct Leadership Statement, delivered 11 seminars for strategic leaders aimed to raise awareness of key leadership concepts, delivered focused ILM training to managers and supervisors, and improved the performance management process by moving to an online platform, achieving a 93.6% completion rate for performance agreements in 2019.

To further bolster governance, the Commissions Secretariat contributed to the development of Regulations for the Standards in Public Life Law to ensure the Law can commence. They also updated the working policies of the Civil Service Appeals Commission in order to ensure the principles of natural justice are upheld.

Also in 2019, the ODG engaged in delivering a range of cross-ministry projects to enhance our national frameworks and mechanisms for safeguarding our children. This included the development of new governance arrangements for child safeguarding. This project, which is largely complete, has rationalized roles and responsibilities amongst stakeholder agencies and delivered new terms of reference and operating procedures for the National Safeguarding Board.

While I have outlined several of our remarkable achievements from 2019, 2020 will see us undertake additional work that will further embed a world-class culture and will move us even closer to our Vision of becoming a World-Class Civil Service, all while continuing to support the achievement of the Government’s Broad Strategic Outcomes. Included in that work will be the introduction of a new strategy to drive innovation and reduce inefficiencies within the Civil Service. To quote a recent case study from the OECD’s Observatory on Public Sector Innovation, “it is not enough to implement best practices, when the real need lies in creating the next practice.” By building the capacity and starting the conversations around innovation, I believe we can create an environment where public sector innovation becomes “business as usual” and we will start to see positive impacts across the Civil Service.

Hon. Franz Manderson

FOREWORD BY
THE CHIEF OFFICER OF THE PORTFOLIO OF THE CIVIL SERVICE

As we enter year three of our 5-Year Strategic Plan and continue to pursue our ambitious Vision “to be a World-Class Civil Service”, I take time to reflect on the accomplishments of 2019.

Evidence of our foundational work across the five goals of the 5-Year Strategic Plan exist throughout the Service. Under Goals Two and Four, Develop Exceptional Leadership and Pursue Excellence in Talent Development, the Civil Service College (CSC) worked to expand learning and development offers to supervisors and managers through Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) programmes. Acknowledging that it is imperative to have a staff complement who are confident, competent and professionally equipped for the task, CSC also facilitated the participation of over 800 employees in various workshops and seminars. Additionally, 290 employees completed, or are currently pursuing leadership and management qualifications through the ILM; 22 employees graduated with

an Associates of Arts in Public Administration; another 20 employees earned Certificates in Public Administration; and three Civil Servants, sponsored by the CSC, completed their Bachelor of Arts degree at UCCI.

In addition to classroom based training, it is now common place for Civil Servants to also be exposed to on-the-job training through secondments to other roles, and to informal coaching and mentoring. More broadly, the Civil Service has developed and agreed terms of reference for Heads of Profession, which will support talent development across specific career paths. To date, approximately 50 Civil Servants have taken advantage of secondment opportunities both locally and overseas. This includes the Internal Audit Service’s Caymanian Deputy Director, Lauren Knight, who completed a secondment with the UK Government’s Internal Audit Agency in August 2019 and commenced a second secondment as the Acting Deputy Chief Officer of PoCS in September 2019.

The creation and launch of the Communications Profession and a Communications Strategy, which consistently promotes the Government’s policy priorities across internal and external audiences, advanced the objectives of Goal Four – Foster Effective Communication. Additional work in this area included the introduction of communication cascades, including the distribution of 128 leader toolkits.

To further advance Goal 5 – Demonstrate Excellence in Governance Practices – PoCS delivered a draft Anti-Bullying, Harassment and Discrimination policy, which is currently in the final stages of review and is due to be implemented in early 2020. This policy will set the tone for expected behaviors in the workplace, outline the responsibilities of employees, and provide a framework and guidance to aid in |5

Gloria McField-Nixon, JP – Chief Officer, Portfolio of the Civil Service

identifying, handling, reporting and resolving alleged occurrences of bullying, harassment and discrimination in the CIG.

2019 also saw PoCS deliver exceptional results in some key areas, all of which continue to move us toward our Vision of becoming World-Class:

The implementation of Section 47 of the Public Authorities Law (PAL) requires all public authorities to use the same salary scale as determined by Cabinet and that all jobs be evaluated using the same job evaluation methodology. PoCS’ Strategic and Corporate HR (SCHR) team spearheaded a project to have approximately 900 unique job descriptions across 25 Statutory Authorities and Government Companies (SAGC) evaluated. While the workload necessitated outsourcing a portion of the evaluations, SCHR, using internal resources, undertook a portion of the evaluations themselves, effectively doubling the annual output targets for the internal job evaluation team.

Brand standards, which reflect the CIG’s identity, were developed and launched. Additionally, we achieved 95% awareness of our Vision to be a World-Class Civil Service, surpassing the previous year’s score of 94%, further indicating that our efforts to communicate and embed our Vision have been successful.

As it relates to governance, the first ever Audit and Risk Assurance Committee (ARAC) for the Core Government was established and held its first full meeting in September 2019. This fills a critical and long-standing gap in our governance arrangements. The Committee provides an independent challenge to governance, risk management and controls for the Core Government and helps to ensure that the risk and control framework is operating effectively.

As in previous years, we continued to recognise and celebrate, through the Deputy Governors Award scheme, those Civil Servants who deliver exemplary service. Additionally, PoCS made lives better by promoting and participating in numerous community outreach programmes which have raised funds for numerous local charities, including the Alex Panton Foundation, the Cayman Islands Crisis Centre and the Cayman Special Needs Foundation.

While 2019 saw many successes, we are cognizant that there is more work ahead. In 2020, PoCS will continue to progress programmes and projects under the 5-Year Strategic Plan, whilst also focusing on transforming the role of HR and integrated technologies to ensure that the CIG operates a modern HR function, all in an effort to deliver world-class services.

Gloria McField-Nixon

Gloria McField-Nixon, JP Chief Officer
Portfolio of the Civil Service