Our bureaucratic system is not in line with modern requirements of public sector governance, service delivery and complex state-market interactions. Efforts to reform bureaucracy have been largely unsuccessful. Part of the reason is that these reforms focused on elite bureaucracy (aka civil service of Pakistan) and were unable to resolve rifts among various cadres of this elite bureaucracy. The reform efforts need to be expanded beyond micro issues and focus more on systemic outcomes and the impact of reforms.

The first major issue in our bureaucratic system is unnecessary centralisation. For example, every state-owned organisation must comply with the public procurement regulatory authority (PPRA) framework even if it has completely different functions than the mainstream public sector.

While the public procurement reform was intended to promote prudence, it has crippled the performance of many public sector organisations. Further, the heads of public sector schools are unable to quickly mobilise funds for everyday maintenance in schools. Pre-audit by the AGPR is also a major hurdle to sound financial management of the public sector.

The irony is that while public officials are held accountable for violations of procurement and financial management rules, their performance and service delivery is neither measured nor rewarded or penalised. In addition to this, the overall public financial management system is also centralised. This idea of a centralised Planning Commission came in the 1960s. There is a need to devolve this function to the relevant line ministries and departments with sufficient financial autonomy and HR capacity to develop and undertake in-house decision-making according to prescribed guidelines.

A decentralised, agile system is needed to manage a country of 220 million people. For this, we need to empower local governments. There is a perception that China’s growth came from its autocratic, central command but China has also devolved powers at the local level and created competition between municipalities and local officials. The central regime provides investment, economic growth and job creation targets to local agencies and officials. These targets are monitored and assessed periodically.

In Pakistan, district-level officials continue to play the role envisaged for them by British colonisers: providing protocol services for provincial bureaucrats and politicians and monitoring prices. The cities need to be led by elected mayors aided by economic development officers and city managers. Civil servants dealing with local governments need to be reoriented towards pursuing goals of economic development. Their focus should be on job creation, increasing mobility, development of inclusive and safe public places and improving service delivery in water, sanitation and waste collection, among other things.

A review of government websites and repositories reveals that there is not one economic development strategy for any city of Pakistan. Part of the reason is that the bureaucrats are wrongly trained to focus on master plans of cities, instead of developing an understanding of local economic development.

A major restructuring is required in key ministries, including the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Industries, the Ministry of Commerce, and the Ministry of Energy. Appointments of secretaries to important ministries, such as the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Energy are not generally based on merit and specialised competence. Secretaries are randomly appointed and removed without consideration of professional understanding/performance of the tasks mandated to these ministries.

The Civil Service Academy and the National School of Public Policy need to hire more academics to instill academic inspiration for learning. Bureaucrats should develop skills in collaborative governance, contract negotiation and management. 

Due to the technical nature of the job, no secretary should be appointed in any of these ministries without at least five years of prior experience in the ministry as a joint secretary or additional secretary and having the relevant qualification. It must be understood that the position of a secretary is highly specialised. Ministers should be politicians and generalists but secretaries should be specialists. These secretaries may come from the civil service but they need to be trained and groomed for these positions.

Further, lateral hiring in mainstream positions is also needed. Hundreds of scientists are employed in organisations affiliated with the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of National Food Security. How can a scientist perform in a bureaucratic position and environment?

Resultantly, we are wasting the potential of our human resource and the public exchequer. Research needs to be carried out in universities. The ministries need to hire and groom science policy experts to serve on leadership positions. However, the research grant funds for universities should be managed and awarded by relevant ministries instead of the Higher Education Commission. This will help them establish close coordination and promote mutual learning between academia and the public sector. We need to reform science policy and its institutional architecture to trigger a new wave of high-quality scientific research in academia and innovation in the business and startups sector.

Policy analysis has evolved as a distinct discipline but the capacity for utilising it has not been developed in any of these ministries. The Civil Service Academy and the National School of Public Policy need to hire more academics to instill academic humility and inspiration for learning among their trainees. The bureaucrats also need to develop skills in collaborative governance, contract negotiation and management, and adaptive leadership. Many of the recent issues from IPPs’ capacity payment to Broadsheet scandal emerged due to lack of capacity in the bureaucracy to understand and negotiate complex commercial deals. There is a need to reorient the focus of such institutions to impart training for the above-mentioned skills, inculcate the love for learning and dialogue and to refine the art of performing in a collaborative and multi-level governance environment.

A major regulatory reform is required in all sector regulators. The main objective of all sector regulators is to foster markets in the country and mediate competing interests. However, most of the regulators are minting money and lack the professional capacity to undertake their core tasks. Others are struggling due to financial constraints. For example, the NEPRA must audit power generation plants but there are less than a dozen staff members in their auditing unit. It takes at least two weeks to audit a power plant. This means that NEPRA lacks the capacity to audit power plants effectively. The NEPRA also lacks technical capacity and managerial efficiency to develop innovative tariffs in the power sector. The regulators need to have autonomy with an appropriate accountability framework. Regulatory governance is another area where bureaucracy needs training and research to make better decisions.

Pakistan’s bureaucracy has maintained control over trade and licensing. Resultantly, we have collusions and inter-generational businesses that lack innovation. Organisations like the Engineering Development Board and Small and Medium Enterprise Development Authority (SMEDA) are a burden on the exchequer and impose additional hurdles instead of being facilitators.

Most of the large-scale businesses are flourishing on rents acquired through tariff protection and other modes of state nexus. This is the reason that Pakistan is not doing so well in global trade in pharmaceuticals, engineering and information technology. The bureaucracy needs to understand such issues and make efforts to promote genuine entrepreneurship at the grassroots level.

The writer is a teacher and economic/urban policy professional having education and interest in public sector governance, entrepreneurship, and cities. He tweets @navift­