Opinion | Can government revamp bring Hong Kong closer to achieving its climate goals?
- Making our city greener and more sustainable is a complex task that requires the efforts of multiple bureaus
- The Lee administration’s ability to deliver on this goal will be a test of whether the expensive restructuring leads to better cooperation between agencies
Creating good policy involves having people with the right skills. They must understand the nature of a given problem, as well as the actual context within which it needs to be solved. They also need the political skills to deal with resistance to change, especially from vested interests.
This is easy to say but very difficult to accomplish, for any government in the world. Strong and clear leadership is vital. Political appointees must know what it takes to shape and carry out the chief executive’s policy aims, then work with the civil service to get the job done.
Aside from assembling a high-quality political team and promoting the right civil servants to support the crafting of policy details, the government also needs to ensure it has a strong internal structure for policy research and deliberation, and for identifying and managing crises.
There may be many internal meetings, but the test is whether coherent and defensible policies are produced. This depends on the knowledge, experience and attitudes of the political appointees and civil servants, and on how they work together.
At their best, they can produce workable policies quickly and take them through the executive and legislative systems successfully. This is possible. However, any weakness along the chain in knowledge, strategic thinking or problem solving could result in kinks and delays. This has been the case in the past.
