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Public service reforms — III

In order to allow for the transition to a unified single public service, those who are currently working as civil servants will be automatically admitted into the fast stream. The proposed federal recruitment commission holds consultation with each civil servant on his or her choice of field, and then decides whether the choice could be entertained in accordance with his or her – academic qualification and/or work experience.

Moreover, the place to continue work, whether at a federal or provincial level, should be decided by the federal recruitment commission in consultation with the concerned province, if need be, and also on the basis of such criteria as the domicile of the officer, and his/her seniority level. At the same time, after being converted to the fast stream, these officers will be subject to the same fast stream evaluation process as for others in the fast stream, and in case they do not meet the needed performance level, they would be transferred to the routine stream with a fixed number of opportunities to qualify back to the fast stream.

An important part of the public service reforms is to rationalize the pension and welfare aspects concerning public service providers/officers which, for example, may be evolved on the lines – as per a decided timeline within the reforms – those in the Scandinavian countries. Thomas Piketty in his book ‘Capital in the twenty-first century’ in which he points out that unlike the rate of economic growth and the related rate on traditional saving instruments, investment in financial instruments brings more consistently greater returns on such investments. It would, therefore, make greater sense to offer employees with investment plans through creation of a special ‘public service pension/superannuation organization’ within each recruitment commission, which would be required to provide them the opportunity to invest these funds into, for instance, stock markets, mutual funds, and secondary debt markets.

Currently, the welfare benefits for civil servants, and more so for government servants are quite insignificant. These should be broadened to include provision of a subsidy for the education and health needs of the immediate family member, increased finance for housing. Moreover, they must be helped deal with any disability issues in their families.

An important aspect that should be made part of public service reforms is the introduction of a sound capacity building programme for the public service providers. In this regard, it would make sense to create a ‘federal level capacity building organization’ within the overall federal recruitment commission. It must have provincial headquarters for better communication with provincial recruitment commissions. Unlike the current practice, whereby Ministry of Economic Affairs performs the task of selecting government/civil servants for various capacity building training endeavours, the proposed organization would work as a dedicated capacity building institute, offering training itself, coordinating training across the public sector, including liaising with State Bank of Pakistan’s training programmes, and selecting officers in a targeted and well-planned manner for international trainings/educational courses.

As a learning curve, it may make sense to seek a technical assistance arrangement with the International Monetary Fund Institute for Capacity Development in an overall effort to formulate the proposed capacity building organization. Capacity building is a specialized field and requires specialized education to plan out a wholesome capacity building programme for the entire public service.

Therefore, public service officers who have the right kind of technical skills within each field of training such as tax administration and policy, health sector management, education sector management, finance, public sector economics should be offered an opportunity by the proposed capacity building organization to serve in this institute. Moreover, the proposed organization should also be responsible for overseeing the performance of all public sector research and training institutes, which are currently working in a somewhat inefficient and uncoordinated manner. These must be aligned with the overall goals of capacity building of public sector officers. It will also be required to play a role in improving the level and frequency of their research-based input into government’s planning and implementation endeavours.

The proposed organization would also be responsible for clearing the names of federal and provincial public service officers for educational courses/trainings, which means taking away this task from the Ministry of Economic Affairs, and to shift this into the hands of a dedicated capacity building organization. Moreover, this organization will also evolve and oversee the research and policy think tanks being proposed within the government ministries. At the same time, it would be responsible for evolving the ‘online trainings component of capacity building’ and manage all the related matters in this regard.

The proposed organization will also be required to ensure that within this proposed policy and research think tanks, there should be created a platform for showcasing research in the shape of both digital and print ‘departmental research journals’. Articles published in these journals would allow in-house appraisal of thought process on various technical issues being faced by that particular department. Sharing data and information with public will also be ensured as people will be allowed to access research papers for free. At the same time, for greater dissemination of the issues, solutions, and the overall work being done by a government ministry/department, the proposed capacity building organization and Pakistan Television (the state TV) will be required to evolve a plan under which certain time – one hour perhaps on a daily basis (with the possibility of at least one repeat telecast during the same day) – is dedicated to periodic discussion of these by one think tank at a time, in the form of launching a TV talk show in this regard.

Dr Omer Javed, "Public service reforms — III," Business Recorder. 2020-03-13.
Keywords: Social sciences , Public service , Provincial level , Financial instruments , Economic growth , Civil servants , Economic affairs , Think tanks , Pakistan Television , Stock markets , Pakistan , 2017

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