Micromanaging government

LAHORE: Micromanagement of state affairs leads to inordinate delays in implementation of the agenda of the ruling party. Reluctance to delegate powers to the next level shows mistrust in the ability of hierarchy.

Every government aims to ease the life of its people. They want stability in prices, adequate availability of essential items, and creation of regular jobs through business-friendly economic policies and better health facilities for all. To achieve these aims the state has to formulate comprehensive policies. Ideally these policies are executed through concerned bureaucratic departments. A minister is entrusted to oversee and monitor the implementation of each of these policies. A proper system of checks and balances from day one ensures there is no deviation from the stated policies.

The minister gets input from their ministries regularly, which is passed on to the cabinet weekly or fortnightly. If this system works smoothly and the concerned minister attends the office regularly the policy works smoothly. Any changes or untoward incident is noted and remedial measures taken. If for instance the ministry of food finds possible slippage in production of a crop or rapid depletion of its stocks; it immediately takes remedial measures that may include arranging stocks through import or taking action against hoarders that were engineering to hoard the stocks.

This ideal situation does not exist in Pakistan. The concerned departments are the last to find out depletion of stocks. It means the system starting from the minister to the bureaucracy was dysfunctional. There was no system of check and balance. The process benefitted some influential persons that engineered the shortages to make money. There is no accountability of the failed ministers or the bureaucracy. The politician is given charge of some other ministry and bureaucrats are simply transferred.

It is in these situations that the chief executive takes the matter in his hands and tries to micromanage things. No one doubts his sincerity but managing prices is humanly not possible when the system that was supposed to manage it has collapsed. The situation worsens further. We need technological micromanagement at both bureaucratic and ministerial level. Both the minister and the bureaucrats must follow some standard operating procedures (SOPs) to have a complete picture of the departments on a day-to-day basis. The minister should follow those SOPs as well as the bureaucrats and this should be manifested electronically. The Prime Minister should have the link of software of each ministry so that he could see the performance with a simple click on his computers.

Those not following the SOPs should first be warned and then shown the door. The prime minister could depute his staff to make a summary of the daily performance of each ministry and its department to be able to take action in time. This is now possible with the availability of technology.

The government is using this technology successfully to fight Covid-19 on a 24/7 basis. The planners at least have full knowledge about the spread of this disease and the violation of SOPs by the public and by some officials. This is the reason that despite huge rise in virus cases the government hospitals are still entertaining the patients because the minister concerned has the complete picture about bed occupancy and availability of ventilators. The prime Minister is also closely involved but through a system that is fully operative.

We have seen a tendency of micromanagement without functional systems in concerned departments in all our democratic regimes. Matters are discussed in the inner circles and the input of the concerned ministry or department is not considered necessary. Many orders are relayed bypassing the concerned minister or secretary.

The man at the top wants to handle every affair and problems. However in all military governments the powers are delegated to the concerned person. The head of the state being from the army follows the army routine of trusting the subordinates to execute the directives in letter and spirit. This is the reason we see relatively better economic performance during military tenures. However we cannot depend on the decision of military dictators because they are not answerable to the electorate. We need our democratically elected governments to learn the art of delegation of powers.

The man at the top or the inner circle of the ruling party could spell out the government agenda and give freehand to concerned persons for its execution. Care should be taken in appointing the right person for the right job. Politicians generally are not technical experts. Though they win elections by humbly convincing their electorate but after assuming power some of them want to run their ministries in an autocratic way.