PENANG, 3 August 2015 – The Director of the Centre for Innovation and Productivity in Public Administration (PIPPA) Dr. Haji Musa Ali recently has been appointed as a Visiting Fellow at the University of Palermo, Italy – the only fellow to be appointed from among those from the Asian countries.

Musa has been appointed as a Visiting Fellow at CED – System Dynamics Group, University Of Palermo, Italy for the duration of three years.

“This appointment is a recognition of USM as such an appointment is quite uncommon among university administrators especially when it was made by a foreign nation; it is an acknowledgement to the university especially to the administrative officers in USM,” said Musa in a special interview with TVUSM, at his office, here recently. 

With this appointment, Musa would be involved in conducting seminars as well as doing research with other researchers at the university, in areas already identified such as strategic management of the public sector and the development of an outcome-based effectiveness measurement framework. 

Musa, who has currently written two books, with the latest being “Transformasi Organisasi: Konsep dan Teknik Pelaksanaan” (Organisational Transformation: Concept and Techniques for Implementation) said the appointment was also an acknowledgement and recognition of PIPPA.

“As of now, PIPPA has implemented various efforts in increasing cooperation with a number of strategic partners at the international level.  Strategic cooperation is very important as we can identify their best practices, while creating avenues to learn about the most current practices or developments applicable, in raising further the quality of the public administration sector with training programmes in order to be more competitive to face current challenges.

“At the same time, we too could learn from their errors when conducting such programmes in their own countries,” he further said, as he has also been invited to speak at the Global HRD Conference organised by the Central Officials Training Institute (COTI) in South Korea this coming September.

He added, to continue to be relevant and competitive, organisations need to continuously empower its staff by changing their “mindset” through human resource development programmes which are systematic and competency-based.

Musa began his career in USM as the Assistant Registrar at the Health Campus in 1990 and until now has served for almost 25 years and placed at various sections and units at the Health and Main Campus.

Throughout his service he has received various awards, among which were the Anugerah Pentadbir Cemerlang USM (2008), Anugerah Maal Hijrah (2008) and received the Anugerah Perkhidmatan Cemerlang USM (1995, 2003, 2004 and 2014). In 2010, while continuing his studies in Australia, he also had the opportunity to serve as a human resource officer at a government agency in Australia and was responsible for the development of a competency framework for the respective department.

Besides doing his duties as the Director of PIPPA, Musa is also currently the Coordinator of the Knowledge Transfer Programme (Monitoring), Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia (KPM), as well as an expert in strategic planning and human resource management for various central agencies, state and local authorities.

Translation: Mazlan Hanafi Basharudin/Text: Siti Naquiah Abdillah​