FIFTY years ago, many civil servants in a newly self-governing Singapore started work from scratch with just a table and chair, typewriter and fan.
While their facilities have improved over the years, the challenges facing the men and women at all rungs of the Public Service have remained daunting.
Their stories, and that of how the Public Service took a young nation into the developed world in one generation, are captured in a new 256-page book.
Titled Pioneers Once More: The Singapore Public Service 1959-2009, it is written by Straits Times senior writer Chua Mui Hoong and published by the Public Service Division (PSD) and Straits Times Press.
Ms Chua, 41, said a key part of the book was looking at the main challenges Singapore faced in each decade, and how the Public Service responded and shaped the country's development. With help from staff at the Information Resources Centre of Singapore Press Holdings and the National Archives, and a team of civil servants, she trawled through newspapers, records and books.
She and former Straits Times journalist Ken Kwek, 31, interviewed more than 70 public servants - from permanent secretaries and police officers to teachers - and worked on the book for 18months starting in 2008. 'They were not just passive agents, but played critical parts in how the nation evolved,' Ms Chua said.
Non-official diplomacy in Southeast Asia: "civil society" or "civil service"?: An article from: Contemporary Southeast Asia
Job satisfaction among higher non-expatriate civil servants in Hong Kong, (Dept. of Sociology, University of Singapore. Working papers, no. 9)
