Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced in his National Day Rally speech that the government would be setting up a Municipal Services Office (MSO).

What is the MSO?

The MSO will coordinate the work of front-line agencies (PA, LTA, PUB, NParks, HDB, NEA, AVA and SPF) to better serve the people. That is to say the public can approach the MSO when they encounter problems in their municipal which will then coordinate a solution between the agencies.

The MSO will come under the purview of the Ministry of National Development and headed  by Minister Grace Fu.

What the Government intends the MSO to be

In a 25 Aug TODAY report, Minister Fu said that the MSO "is not intended to be an 'omnibus' body for the public to direct all their feedback for forwarding to the various government agencies."

She also said, "If the public already knows that a certain area is done by a certain agency ... actually there is no reason we should create a bureaucracy to pull these services into a central unit." The MSO is used for more 'complex' cases.

What the public will probably think the MSO is

The issue now is that the public may not know who to call when they face problems. This probably explains why 58 per cent, or 825,967, of the calls received by the police in 2012 were non-emergency in nature.

Additionally, the public may also not know what constitutes a 'complex' case which the MSO handles. It is understandable that Minister Fu wants to cut down the red tape and deliver a solution to residents as soon as possible. In fact, she "will spend the next six months focusing on the interaction between the public and government agencies".

The reality is that Singaporeans want the same thing, but may not have the efficacy to help cut down bureaucracy.

As it stands now, Singaporeans may be calling the wrong agencies and have their requests bounced around several others before a solution is found. They may have to make multiple calls or forward emails to several agencies in hopes of finding the right person. (Editor: What happened to the "No Wrong Door" policy? The policy was introduced in 2004 as a means for the Public Service to deal with misdirected feedback.)

Moving forward, if they know that the MSO will be able to coordinate relevant agencies, they will likely use the MSO as the catch-all agency to solve their problems. Let the public servants do all the re-direction and make the necessary phone calls.

But of course, if your neighbours upstairs are putting out wet laundry that is dripping water all over your clothes, the best way is not to call the police or the MSO, but approaching your neighbours nicely first.

Top photo from Allan Siew

Find Mothership.SG on Facebook and Twitter.