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Friday March 29, 2024

Reforming the civil service

The prime minister has expressed a vague interest in civil service reform. A few badly planned meetings with the usual retired civil servants have taken place repeating the usual platitudes. Chances are that reform will distort the system, further strengthening the DMG into some new nomenclature like the Executive Group.

By our correspondents
March 28, 2015
The prime minister has expressed a vague interest in civil service reform. A few badly planned meetings with the usual retired civil servants have taken place repeating the usual platitudes. Chances are that reform will distort the system, further strengthening the DMG into some new nomenclature like the Executive Group.
To my mind this should be pre-empted for the good of the country. This is why I am going to put down once again what I think are the core principles on which this reform should take place. These are:
• An independent civil service independence guaranteed by law. All key decisions about the running of the service (recruitment, promotions, transfers, pay and pensions) should be protected from any interference. Of course all these things happen under legal guidelines but that is all. The prime ministers, MNAs and ministers should not control any civil service appointments.
• UPS should be abolished. The civil service should not be viewed as a monolith comprising of all government employees. Currently unified pay scales (UPS), a hangover of the socialist planning days seek to place all services on an artificial relative scale so that doctors and professors are considered inferior to administrators. This seriously impedes professional development and should be discontinued. Professions and government agencies (or professions) should be allowed to establish their own pay scales within their budgets.
• Lifetime predetermined careers where promotions are guaranteed at known intervals have to be discontinued. The current entitlement mentality of civil servants has to end. Merit rather than entitlement should be initiated so that performance is rewarded.
• All civil service jobs should not be protected from external competition. The preferred scenario would be to open out recruitment to external competition. If that is not acceptable, all senior appointments (secretary and additional secretary) should be based on worldwide competition. Public sector senior appointments affect so much; the best people should be sought for them.
• The current system of the federal government controlling provincial and local civil services is not conducive to good governance, federal development and economic growth. As in the rest of the world, each level of government must be independent. The provinces and cities should have their own employees and there is no reason that they should be paid less or regarded inferior to the federal government. This is also the need of devolution.
• At present the secretary enjoys too much power with entire divisions and attached departments placed at her beck and call. The rules of business make the secretary of a division the Principal Accounting Officer (POA) of not only that division but of all attached departments. The result is excessive centralisation that impedes productivity. With the government so big there is no reason why the POA who controls the budget and administration should not be at various levels in a department.
• Transfers should be recognised as a control device and should be discontinued. Frequent transfers are not helping productivity and should be questioned in parliament. Like the rest of the world, appointments should be given tenure with new appointments being obtained through a competitive not a command process. Of course mobility rules will be put in place not just within the civil service but also to facilitate flow between the public and private sectors for required cross fertilisation.
• Perks, which are now so connected with power, corruption and payment, should be monetised. The current payment method is dysfunctional, induces corruption and adversely affects productivity. All perks should be monetised taking the government out of the business of providing houses and cars and paying utility bills. Salaries should be all in cash, based on market comparators and indexed. Benefits should include no more than indexed, fair valued pensions and healthcare.
• The established practice of ‘public service should not be paid well’ needs serious review. Public service positions are too important to be short-changed. Public servants should be paid well in keeping with the heavy responsibilities they carry. All serious reforming countries have done that. Market based salaries should be given while appointments and promotions should be on merit and external competition.
• Processes and rules of business should be reviewed to ensure that government becomes a learning, investigating and thinking government using technology, developing data, information and analysis and innovative in policy determination and public service delivery. Such a bureaucracy would be continuously reforming itself and adapting to a rapidly changing world.
• Training programmes of the government should be reviewed to facilitate a modern professional bureaucracy and move beyond the current approach to develop a generalist league of gentlemen.
Reform should be developed through a process such as an independent commission comprising (or backed up by) serious technical skills, intellectual firepower and certainly some fresh faces. The commission should openly consult with the civil society and other segments of society. Donor input, if any should be subjected to local public scrutiny and not just implemented.
Reform must not take place by excluding unpalatable reformers and including only those who will not push for hard reform.
The civil service comprises the bulk of the executive and affects all aspects of society. The configuration of the civil service for a new society in a new century should be of serious interest to all. Consequently this reform should not be done in back rooms by the patient that needs healing – the bureaucracy. Nor should it be left to donors who have had opportunity in the past and failed.
The key principles of reform must be clearly understood and debated in parliament and passed into law. It is too important a matter to be left to administrative change in rules alone.
The writer is former deputy chairman of the Planning Commission.
Email: nhaque_imf@yahoo.com
Twitter: @nadeemhaque