# The Prime Minister's Department: Malaysia's Central Coordinating Agency

> Entity page for Jabatan Perdana Menteri (JPM) — the federal department established in July 1957 that houses the Prime Minister's Office and dozens of other divisions and agencies. Covers its founding purpose, how it grew from three original units into a multi-agency department, and which well-known federal bodies trace their origin to it.

- Category: government
- Language: en
- Status: published
- Updated: 2026-07-24
- Canonical: https://negaraku.md/en/government/prime-ministers-department

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Malaysia does not have a single ministry that runs the country's day-to-day
policy machine. It has a department — and that department is bigger than most
ministries combined.

Jabatan Perdana Menteri (JPM), the Prime Minister's Department, is where the
Cabinet Division sits alongside the Public Service Department's ancestor
agencies, the national statistics office's ancestor agency, and — at various
points in its history — the body that runs Malaysia's elections. None of that
is a coincidence. It is how JPM was designed from its first year.

## At a glance

| | |
| --- | --- |
| Malay name | Jabatan Perdana Menteri (JPM) |
| English name | Prime Minister's Department |
| Established | July 1957 |
| Predecessor | Office of the Chief Secretary (abolished) |
| Type | Federal government department |
| Top civil servant | Chief Secretary to the Government (Ketua Setiausaha Negara / KSU) |
| Size at founding (1957) | 3 divisions/units |
| Size in 1961 | 13 divisions/units |
| Headquarters | Perdana Putra, Federal Government Administrative Centre, 62502 Putrajaya |
| Occupied Putrajaya HQ since | 1999 |

## Why it was set up

JPM was established in July 1957, in the run-up to Merdeka, after the earlier
Office of the Chief Secretary was abolished. Its own published administrative
history states its purpose in two parts:

- to plan, formulate and coordinate the country's policies and objectives,
  while ensuring national security, so that government policy could be carried
  out for the wellbeing of Malaysians; and
- to ensure that administrative, financial, staffing, protocol and
  conference-management matters — the machinery common to every government
  department — were carried out according to standing regulations.

That history describes JPM as the most important department in the national
administrative system, on the basis that it is the centre responsible for the
government's principal policies. It is a claim about coordination, not about
any single policy area — which is the key difference between JPM and an
ordinary ministry.

## A container department from day one

At founding, JPM held just three units: the Cabinet Division, the Security and
Intelligence Division, and the Secretariat for the Economic Adviser. Its
day-to-day administration was led by the Chief Secretary to the Government
(also styled the Chief Secretary, KSU), assisted by Deputy Secretaries-General.

That structure did not stay small. By 1961, JPM had grown to 13
divisions and units, and it kept expanding in the decades that followed as
new national priorities were placed under its roof.

The pattern repeats through the decades: a new national priority emerges, and
rather than create a brand-new ministry for it, government places the
responsible unit inside JPM, where it reports through the Cabinet and the
Chief Secretary's office rather than through a sectoral minister. This is why
JPM's roster of agencies has never mapped onto a single theme.

## Well-known agencies that began inside JPM

Several institutions Malaysians now think of as independent were originally
established as central agencies of JPM:

- The **Public Service Commission** (Suruhanjaya Perkhidmatan Awam), established
  31 August 1957 — the day of Merdeka itself — to handle civil service
  appointments, confirmations, permanent posts, promotions, transfers and
  discipline.
- The **Election Commission** (Suruhanjaya Pilihan Raya), established
  4 September 1957 under Article 114 of the Federal Constitution. Today it
  operates as an independent constitutional body — see
  [SPR: mandate and functions](/en/government/spr-election-commission).
- The **Istana Negara**, placed under JPM's care from 1957.
- The forerunner of the **Department of Statistics Malaysia**, which began
  operating under the Statistics Act 1965, replacing the earlier Bureau of
  Statistics. Its modern successor is described in
  [DOSM](/en/government/dosm).
- The **National Family Planning Board**, established in 1966, later renamed
  the National Population and Family Development Board (LPPKN).

Some of these bodies have since moved to other ministries or become
independent constitutional institutions; others remain under JPM today. This
page describes the historical pattern of how JPM has functioned as an
incubator for federal institutions, rather than asserting any specific
agency's reporting line as of today.

## Where it sits today

JPM's headquarters is Perdana Putra, at the Federal Government Administrative
Centre in Putrajaya. Construction began in 1997 and the building was completed
in 1999, when sections of the department relocated there from Kuala Lumpur.
Perdana Putra houses the Prime Minister's Office alongside a number of other
offices that support government policy and administration.

Because Cabinet reshuffles routinely change which Minister oversees which
JPM portfolio, and because the department's exact current roster of agencies
is not published as a single stable list on its portal, this page does not
name specific present-day officeholders or a current agency count. For the
constitutional rules on how the Prime Minister and Cabinet are appointed, see
[the Cabinet and the Prime Minister](/en/government/kabinet-perdana-menteri).

## Common mistakes

**"JPM is just the Prime Minister's personal office."** The Prime Minister's
Office is one part of it. JPM as a whole is a full federal department with
dozens of divisions and agencies covering areas that have nothing to do with
the Prime Minister's personal schedule.

**"All agencies under JPM deal with the same kind of work."** They don't, and
never have. From its first year, JPM combined cabinet administration, security
coordination and economic advice — three unrelated functions under one roof.

**"JPM is a recent or temporary body."** It was established in July 1957,
before independence, and has operated continuously since — making it one of
the oldest federal departments in Malaysia.

## What's next

- Read [the Cabinet and the Prime Minister](/en/government/kabinet-perdana-menteri)
  for the constitutional rules on how the Prime Minister is appointed and how
  the Cabinet is formed.
- Read [Yang di-Pertuan Agong](/en/government/yang-di-pertuan-agong) for the
  head of state whose executive authority the Cabinet advises.
- Read [DOSM](/en/government/dosm) and
  [SPR: mandate and functions](/en/government/spr-election-commission) for two
  agencies that trace their origin to JPM and now operate independently.
- Read [Malaysia's three tiers of government](/en/government/three-tiers-of-government)
  to see where the federal government, including JPM, fits against the state
  and local tiers.

## Sources

- Sejarah Pentadbiran Jabatan Perdana Menteri (Dari Tahun 1957 hingga Tahun 1966) — https://www.jpm.gov.my/images/sejarah/TAHUN_1957-1966.pdf (Jabatan Perdana Menteri Malaysia)
- Jabatan Perdana Menteri — Contact Us — https://www.jpm.gov.my/en/contact-us (Jabatan Perdana Menteri Malaysia)
- Perdana Putra — https://www.pmo.gov.my/ms/perdana-putra/ (Pejabat Perdana Menteri Malaysia (Prime Minister's Office))
- Prime Minister's Department Official Portal — https://www.jpm.gov.my/en/ (Jabatan Perdana Menteri Malaysia)

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