By Professor Dato Dr Ahmad Ibrahim
I recently attended a roundtable discussion hosted by the PTD Alumni of Malaysia on the contentious issue of civil service reform. The consensus among the esteemed panelists was clear: the machinery of our government is not in the best of shape. Bureaucratic inertia, siloed ministries working at cross-purposes, and a chronic gap between policy aspiration and on-the-ground implementation continue to hamper our nation’s progress. The glaring absence of rigorous monitoring and evaluation was singled out as a critical failure point.
This diagnosis is not new. In fact, it is what prompted the establishment of the Performance Management and Delivery Unit (PEMANDU) in 2010. For a moment, it seemed Malaysia had found a cure. PEMANDU, with its data-driven labs, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and very public scorecards, promised a new way of working. Its most celebrated achievement, the Economic Transformation Programme (ETP), was credited with attracting significant investment and providing a clear, accountable roadmap for economic growth. This success, however, leads us to the central, perplexing question that hung over the roundtable discussion: If PEMANDU showed such promise, why was its model ultimately abandoned?
The answer lies not in the model’s failure, but in its inherent design and the political ecosystem into which it was introduced. PEMANDU’s greatest strength was also its fatal flaw: it was an external unit designed to bypass the very system it sought to change. PEMANDU was a classic “delivery unit” model, inspired by similar successes in the UK and elsewhere. Its purpose was to cut through red tape, force collaboration through lab sessions, and hold ministries accountable to specific, measurable outcomes. It worked—for the projects under its purview. But it operated as a parallel structure, reporting directly to the Prime Minister. It did not, and perhaps could not, transform the underlying culture of the permanent civil service. It was a specialist team brought in to perform emergency surgery while the patient’s chronic illness was left untreated. When the political winds shifted, the bypass was easily removed, and the system reverted to its default state.
PEMANDU’s existence was entirely dependent on top-level political patronage. Its authority was derived from the Prime Minister’s Office, not from an organic, institutionalised mandate. This made it powerful but vulnerable. Its high-profile, public-facing nature meant its successes were claimed by the government of the day, and its failures were magnified by its opponents. When the administration changed, the new leadership, seeking to distance itself from its predecessor, had little incentive to sustain a model so closely associated with them. True, deep-rooted institutional reform requires cross-party, long-term commitment that transcends electoral cycles—a commodity in desperately short supply.
PEMANDU’s culture of transparency and relentless, data-driven accountability was often perceived as a threat within the traditional civil service hierarchy. The longstanding culture of seniority, procedure, and risk-aversion clashed with PEMANDU’s result-oriented, “whatever it takes” approach. Without a concerted effort to win the “hearts and minds” of the civil service at large—to make them owners of the transformation rather than targets of it—resentment and resistance were inevitable. Transformation cannot be imposed from an island; it must be seeded across the continent.
So, what is the path forward for transforming the civil service? The lesson of PEMANDU is not that its methods were wrong, but that they were incomplete. We must learn from its experience to build a more sustainable model. First, institutionalise, don’t isolate. The principles of PEMANDU—data-driven decision-making, cross-ministerial collaboration, and rigorous M&E—must be embedded into the very fabric of every ministry and agency. This requires updating archaic work procedures, investing in continuous training for civil servants, and empowering Chief Secretaries to lead this change from within.
Second, empower and trust the service. The civil service is brimming with talented, dedicated individuals frustrated by the very systems the panelists described. Transformation must be a participatory process. Bottom-up innovation should be incentivised and celebrated. Civil servants must be given the tools and the autonomy to achieve outcomes, rather than just blindly follow processes. Third, depoliticise delivery. The appointment of senior civil service leaders must be based on merit and competency, shielded from the whims of political change. A professional, neutral civil service is the bedrock upon which consistent policy implementation is built, regardless of which party is in power.
PEMANDU was a bold experiment that proved Malaysia could deliver when it focused. Its demise is a cautionary tale about the difference between performing transformation and truly being transformed. The goal is not to create another temporary unit, but to build a civil service that is inherently agile, accountable, and citizen-centric. The diagnosis from the PTD roundtable is clear. The medicine is known. What we require now is the sustained courage to administer it.
The author is affiliated with the Tan Sri Omar Centre for STI Policy Studies at UCSI University and is an Adjunct Professor at the Ungku Aziz Centre for Development Studies, Universiti Malaya. He can be reached at ahmadibrahim@ucsiuniversity.edu.my.