He noted, “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.”

For the full text of the Deputy Governor’s Foreword to the report, see below.

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.