Under the constitution, the Deputy Governor manages public service officers on a day-to-day basis but ultimately, the Governor oversees the entire body.

In his statement to the Commission of Inquiry (COI) who invited him to share his position on ‘good governance’, Penn said one of the constitutional changes that would allow for greater self-government would be for the portfolio of the public service to be moved to an elected minister.

“Just as if it could happen under the Deputy Governor or the Governor, I don’t see why it can’t happen under a minister … The minister has a level of accountability built into the system. He has to go back to the people every four years and reapply for his job,” Penn reasoned.

“There has always been this issue of who is really in charge so there is always this back and forth between the ministers and the Governor and the Deputy Governor and we need to have it clearly defined who is really in charge, and we need to put the tenets in place to ensure that whatever needs to be executed, it is executed,” the Opposition Leader added.

He continued: “We had this back and forth recently in the appointment of Permanent Secretaries. We don’t know what really happened. But we need to know who is in charge. We need to clearly delineate the lines of the roles of responsibility, and then hold whoever that individual is accountable to the people of the territory because at the end of the day, it is the taxpayers’ resources that is being used to do these things.”

Penn also argued that there was no continuous process of accountability with the governor as head of the service, especially when it came to training public service members with the skills needed to perform their duties.