Gallimore was speaking at the Public Sector Customer Service Conference, put on by the Modernisation Division in the Cabinet Office, at the Terra Nova All-Suite Hotel on Wednesday.

He noted that in the recently launched productivity report for Jamaica the country was trailing most Caribbean nations in produc-tivity for the last 35 years.

"Our level of productivity, more than anything else, affects the standard of living enjoyed by our people. Every man and every woman in Jamaica's public service has a role to play in changing these statistics."

Total change

Gallimore highlighted the need for a total change in the way the systems which support efficient service delivery worked.

"I believe that it is important that we have a serious paradigm shift in respect of how we do things in our country. We need to look at developed countries and their systems of measurement and control, how they monitor performance and the level of standards that they set."

In commending the developers of the customer service programme in the modernisation division of the Cabinet Office for seeking to put performance monitoring and evalua-tion systems in place to help support continuous improvement of service, Gallimore emphasised the need for mangers to continuously evaluate and improve service to remain productive.

The National Customer Service Programme is a project in the Public Sector Modernisation Division of the Office of the Cabinet to improve the guaranteed levels of service in all government agencies.