The unFashionable Enforcement Function

HDB acquires 4 flats

As part of the stepped-up enforcement against unauthorised subletting, the HDB carried out checks on 2,600 flats in the first five months of this year - four times more than the 690 inspections it made in the earlier five months from August to December last year.

Of the cases checked, 1,860 arose from HDB's routine inspections, while 740 cases were based on feedback from members of the public.

'Close to 2,300 cases are found to be in order. Investigation is still on-going for the remaining 300 cases. Of these, 59 cases are suspected to have infringed the subletting rules,' said the HDB.

In the past 5 months, HDB has carried out checks on 2,600 cases, of which almost 30% were due to complaints. Together with the 690 cases checked from Aug-Dec 2009, the total no. of cases for almost 1 year = 3,290.

To date, there are roughly about 1 million units of HDB flats in Singapore.
Assuming no repeats, then HDB has only covered 0.33% of all flats in Singapore in almost 1 year at about 10 flats per work day.

At this rate, it will take HDB 3oo years to complete a thorough exercise, assuming the supply of flats remains the same.

Of course, one hopes that the act of taking any action against errant flat owners will be a stern and effective warning to the rest. 杀一儆百. But that... is a huge assumption on its own.
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Which brings us to another significant point.

头重脚轻
If you have noticed, many (not all) public agencies have very developed 'brain, mouth and fingers' departments. These departments do the thinking, talking and typing, i.e. craft the policies which translates to Acts, guidelines etc, services the politicans/public etc. The muscles in these departments are huge and their attendant budgets are... sometimes... on steriods.

Meanwhile, the departments in-charge of compliance/enforcement, i.e. those who are supposed to go whack people for not complying with the respective Acts/guidelines, are usually relatively very small... underdeveloped... and of course, not 'cool' to be part of. Only a few public agencies have clearly and conscientiously developed their 'compliance/enforcement' muscles to use the powers vested to them through their respective pieces of legislation . The obvious being the Home Team, parts of Ministry of Manpower etc.

So, if everyone only wants to dance, drink and be seen as happening in the party, who is playing 'Bouncer'?

不做，就不可能错
I have not heard anyone mouth the official reason to why many enforcement arms are under-developed. No one in his 'right' mind will give such a statement. But it's crystal clear that the lack of enforcement muscle has been used to reject responsibilities, e.g. "We can't help to enforce this... Our enforcement unit is very tiny... We can only enforce passively, i.e. triggered by complaints..." Then it all comes back to the all-time favourite line: "It's better for the industry, residents, public etc... to self-regulate."

To put it very simply, no one wants to open up this can of worms during his 3 to 5-year reign of chief of XYZ public agency. There is a lot of enforcement work undone.

And setting up and sustaining an effective enforcement arm is a specialist domain on its own, which very few people in the service really possess. You need to grow functional skills such as investigation, operations and intel. You need to find officers who are willing to and well-equipped with knowledge to play the enforcing role. You need to secure a senior executive to oversee this department and maintain its morale. And most of all, you may not get to see results as fast/fancy as if you had spent those resources on setting up a sexy policy/ businss development/ rah rah unit.

机会与智慧
However, if you do learn to do so and also educate the public on how the enforcement can be genuinely effective, the public will be very grateful because effective enforcement has always been seen as the differentiating factor of Singapore.

See this as an opportunity. 'Blue Ocean'-ish. To create jobs and extend careers by hiring retired officers who have these skills. This will help to keep morale high. And since quite a few public agencies need this function, a Plug'n'Play framework can be developed across the Service. Yet another point to score, right?