Despite the COVID-19, the participation of State and Federal agencies in this year’s Innovation Month Celebration Program is very encouraging.
This was said by the Sarawak State Secretary, YB Datuk Amar Jaul Samion during the Sarawak Civil Service Innovation Convention Award (SCSICA) 2021 award ceremony on 14 October in Kuching.
“The number of agency participation increased to 100 per cent from 13 agencies to 26 agencies and similarly the number of innovation month programs or activities also shows a 180 per cent increment from 15 programs to 41 programs,” said Datuk Amar Jaul.
Speaking of the Public Service Innovation Month, he added that 78 per cent of the programs were implemented online (32 programs) while 22 per cent were conducted in physical form (9 programs) in accordance with the new norms and complied with the established SOPs.
The participants involved in the program are civil servants, the general public and the local community.
To date, a total of 632 innovation projects have been produced and the number of active Innovative and Creative Circle (ICC) communities (civil servants) in the Sarawak Civil Service has now reached 5227 participants (ICC practitioners).
The total number of ICC has increased from 54 to 89 groups this year.
“In addition, the ICC Mini Convention involving 12 Units in the Chief Minister’s Department (JKM) was successfully held on 6 to 7 September 2021 for the first time,”
“The response was very encouraging with the initial participation of 13 ICC Groups from involvement of nine units in JKM,” he said adding that three out of nine ICC groups are qualified for the finals of SCSICA 2021.
In his speech, Datuk Amar Jaul also said that a good innovation is one which benefits a large spectrum of the society.
“Social inclusivity is one of the main thrusts under the Post COVID Development Strategy 2030 (PCDS 2030), which was launched by the Sarawak Chief Minister on 22 July 2021,”
“Therefore, when we produce an innovation, we need to consider those living in the remote places so these group of people are not left behind to benefit the services from the government,” said Datuk Amar Jaul.
In being innovative, the products must achieve basic goals which includes being a citizen centric problem solver and it has to be made to solve the internal problems of an organization such as “inefficiency” in any department or agency.
Explaining more, Datuk Amar Jaul said that upon confronting problems faced by the public, the role of civil servants is to come up with unconventional ideas to solve the problem.
Innovation must also be used to improve work quality, reduce expenses, speed up delivery of services and overall, to improve the efficiency of any organisations.
“Therefore, I call for all these innovation products to be implemented and incorporated into a more integrated and comprehensive ‘actionable and implementation plans’ to identify and solve problems faced by the people, especially the rural community,”
“With this, only then can we recognize that this theme (INNOVATION; Breaking through Norms) has achieved its goal of innovation with significant impact and add value to the well -being of the people,” said Datuk Amar Jaul.
