PUTRAJAYA: Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has hinted of "good news" in the upcoming 2018 Budget for the civil servants.
The good news include improvements to the public sector, but the prime minister declined to reveal the details until the 2018 Budget is tabled by the end of this month.
"I know, many of you are waiting for certain announcements. God willing, several 'good news' and improvements for all civil servants will be announced in the 2018 Budget on Oct 27," he said to a loud applause from 5,000-strong civil servants at the premier gathering of the civil service (Mappa) today.
He also stressed on the significance for civil servants to change themselves.
"Civil servants must transform to be more efficient; breaking the traditional boundaries: to go beyond the usual achievements and more importantly, we must always raise the bar high and continue to keep the bar high to create more success stories for Malaysia.
"We urge all public servants to double their efforts in multi-tasking, multi-skills and multi-talented coupled with the creative and innovative culture that will result in high-productivity, high value, high thinking, high skills and highly motivated," he said.
The prime minister had also outlined three major challenges for the future.
The first challenge, he said, was to address the era of 'the new order', geopolitics and world peace.
"Our country is facing new geopolitics risk. This has become a serious problem which involves the crisis faced by the Islamic nations, North Korea's nuclear programme and the impact of Brexit.
"Lately, there are incidences of violences, bombing in public places by terrorists and extremists in many parts of the world.
"This can also happen in Malaysia, if these threats are not curbed and managed properly ," he said, adding the government would continuously uphold the nation's peace and security.
He added the government strived to keep the extreme ideologies at bay and away from the civil servants such as the Islamic State (IS) which had misinterpreted the "jihad" concept.
Najib said the second challenge would be on protecting the people's needs, welfare and interests.
The government, he said, had engineered its strategic plans under the National Transformation Policy to put Malaysia on the path towards a developed and high income nation.
Among the government's initiative are the 1Malaysia People's Aid (BR1M), the 1Malaysia Civil Servants Housing Projects (PPA1M), 1Malaysia Clinic and many more.
The government had also embarked on various people-centric projects including the Mass Rail Transit (MRT), the East Coast Rail Link, the High Speed Rail and the Pan-Borneo Highway, he added.
Najib said the third challenge involved the 4th Industrial Revolution (IR4.0) and the era of digital economy.
This challenges, he said, had pushed the government to ensure the success of the Malaysia Digital Policy.
"The IR 4.0 will happen through three key characteristics- velocity; breadth and depth, as well as systems impact.
"This will result in things such as autonomous car, quantum computing and artificial intelligence which are beyond our imagination," he added.
On this note, Najib said the civil service must be able to respond quickly to the disruptive technology in a multi-dimensional approach.
"Civil servants must combine top-down and bottom-up approaches as well as inside-out and outside-in approaches in the formulation of policies, new regulation including the rights and privacy of customers, security, education, economy and smart technology," he added.