Currently after Government's 1970s' Wage Restructuring push, public sector's wages are costing the taxpayers dearly exceeding 2% of GDP.
As posted in the many forums including Feedback Unit, YPAP, SGFORUM, etc there have been much wastages caused by duplication of duties and roles at various ministries such as the following:-
(1) HDB, Town Council, CDC, PA, Mayors are duplicating each other.
(2) Extra promotional positions at various government departments and statutory board can be made short-rein and shorter e.g. there is no need for so many tiers of management or senior positions like Adm Assistant, senior adm assist, chief clerk/adm, officer, exe officer, senior, senior exe, principal, senior principal, deputy director, director, head, Deputy Head, Deputy CEO, CEO, MD, Vice- Senior-Vice and President.
In big MNCs, there have adopted mostly a simple three tier structure: CEO, Senior Manager, Manager, Senior Exe and Exe.
(3) Ministers and Sub-Ministers, and Ministers of State should be able to serve the entire legislative and Executive since they are backed up by Permanent Secretary and Deputies who are all highly paid implementers at scholar-level appointments with high salaries of $250,000 and above pa.
(4) Statutory Boards and special committees previously branched off from existing government departments are duplicating with existing functions of ministries. With reduction of functions of the main ministries, the corresponding senior officers from Permanent Secretaries and Deputies level are having lesser functions and should have their salaries reduced or transferred to relevant departments with pre-existing functions handled by lower-level staff without permanent secretaries.
Permanent secretaries are highly paid officers which should not keep increasing for the purpose of equalization with other ministries.
Given a revamp along the MNC line of management structure, citizens should be able to save much more than $650 millions as announced.
Just activate the PMO department in charge of Systems and Methods and cost saving, I am sure that the government can save fat-padding in great number of promotional super-scale and super-manpower structure as many functions have also been simplified by computerisations and e-management.
Government is nowadays run on very high salaries even higher than private sector. As such PM owes a duty to citizens to run the government competitively within 1-1.5 % of GDP following computerization and farming out of many tasks to private sectors and GLCs etc.
Do not just stop the wage revamp at PSA, SIA and HDB. There were much fatter fats to be trimmed at Town council/HDB/Mayor/PA etc etc in addition to various ministries.
As shown in the case of PSA, SIA, HDB which recently were revamped resulting in wage saving without affecting productivity, this revamp can be done at various ministers with fats cut off by means of attritions or retrenchments or outsourcing.