PENANG, 3 August 2015 – The Centre for Innovation and Productivity in Public Administration (PIPPA) of Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) has earned international recognition for Malaysian public administration by becoming the first agency outside the United Kingdom to forge strategic co-operation with the Educational Competencies Consortium (ECC) in London.

PIPPA Director Dr Hj. Musa Ali said, through co-operation with the ECC, public administrators including those from USM would have the opportunity to undergo training in London besides the privilege of indirect access to human resources management systems at 125 British universities.

“In USM we have developed and used the MyCPD system since 2008 which is a system for recording lifelong learning efforts of our staff, whereas the ECC has developed the Higher Education Role Analysis (HERA) framework which manages staff competencies at 125 British universities, including Oxford and Cambridge,” said Musa.

Apart from co-operation in training programmes, the collaboration would combine the two systems of MyCPD and HERA to create an impact in the context of human resources development in Malaysia and other developing nations. In line with this, PIPPA has therefore developed long term plans to introduce the ASEAN-HERA initiative.

Three years after the establishment of PIPPA at the behest of the USM Vice-Chancellor Professor Dato’ Dr. Omar Osman, this unit has trained more than 4,500 civil servants from various agencies, both local and foreign, including those from ASEAN, the Middle East and Australia. To date, PIPPA has established more than 10 foreign strategic partnerships encompassing Middle Eastern nations, Southeast Asia, Australia, Europe and the United States of America.

“The majority of participants at PIPPA-organised programmes were staff from various federal agencies with about 5 percent international participation which nevertheless has an impact on our programmes; for example, the programme in Dubai attracted participants from various countries such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia,” said Musa.

This allows a two-way exchange of information between trainees and facilitators which is something unique that participants would not be able to enjoy at similar training programmes run by other agencies.

To date, PIPPA is offering training programmes at seven international locations including Malaysia, the ASEAN region, Australia, Korea, Hong Kong, Europe and the Middle East.

Besides training, PIPPA is also involved in research and consultancy for various agencies in developing strategic departmental planning and developing holistic human resources frameworks.

In the context of USM, PIPPA is also collaborating with the Institutional Development Section (BPI) in developing the USM2020 Master Plan.

“For USM2020 Master Plan, PIPPA is developing a methodology which will serve as a guiding principle in three areas namely administrative management/governance, talent management and resources management,” said Musa.

With this in place, USM will utilise best practices which have been adopted not only in Malaysia but also internationally to ensure the comprehensive development of the USM2020 Master Plan and more importantly, the successful execution and continued systematic monitoring of the methods developed.

Translation: Dr Nurul Farhana Low Abdullah/Text: Syuhada Abd Aziz