Civil service reform is in the air since Prime Minister Imran Khan’s speech. A spate articles are coming out in the papers. I am afraid that these reforms will go the same way as in the past — some window dressing, a change in nomenclature with further centralization and more power to a DMG like service. Islamabad always grows in power!

This is an important reform! The whole society and our best brains should be engaged in making this happen. Most important of all, the Prime Minister and the cabinet must be fully engaged in making this happen.

To begin with we must all clarify certain principles and develop a vision of what we want.

We must begin by recognizing that 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. Moreover, the bureaucracy — the patient that needs healing — should not be the major designer of this reform. Nor should donors, a large ineffective bureaucracy themselves be allowed into the process. Finally, international consultants who thrive on copy paste should also be left out. Let the society and their representatives work hard and think this one through.

Reform should be designed by a process such as an independent commission comprised of (or backed up by) serious technical skills, intellectual firepower and certainly some fresh faces. The commission must do open consultation with civil society and many segments of society. Donor input if any should be subjected to local public scrutiny and not just implemented.

The commission should begin with an enunciation of key principles of reform and debate them widely. These principles of reform must be clearly understood and debated in Parliament and passed into law. CSR is too important to be left to administrative change in rules alone.

What then are the principles that such a reform should seek?

1. Unified Pay Scales (UPS) should be abolished. Civil service should not be viewed as a monolith comprising of all government employees. Currently Unified Pay Scales (UPS) which are 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. Government agencies should be allowed to establish their own pay scales within their budgets according to the market for professionalism in the country!

2. Lifetime predetermined careers where promotions are guaranteed at known intervals have to be discontinued. Current entitlement mentality of civil servants has to end. Merit rather than entitlement should be initiated so that performance is rewarded.

3. Civil service independence must be guaranteed by law. This can only be done if all law ensures that all key decisions about the running of the service (recruitment, promotions, transfers, pay and pensions) are protected from any interference. Of course, all these things happen under legal guidelines but that is all. MNAs and ministers should not be able to control civil service appointments at any level.

4. The established practice of “public service should not be paid well” needs serious review.Public service positions are too important to be shortchanged. 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.

Civil servants should be paid well in (and only in) cash on competitive terms with the private sector. We should remember that the colonial empire paid them handsomely and got good returns. Lee Kuan Yu’s early reform was to pay civil service well.

In moving to higher salaries, let not forget the invisible forms of payment when we are talking of increasing their salaries. Right now, the bulk of payment to senior government officials is in perks (free center housing, fleet of cars for personal use, number of servants and hangers-on, utility bills, board memberships, subsidized clubs, arbitrary gifts of land). The way things stand, a bureaucrat is cash poor but perk rich.

Perks must be abolished it the incentives of civil servants are to be aligned with needs of public service delivery and professionalism. Some well-known drawbacks need to be reviewed.

4.1.They are invisible forms of payment that depend on discretion of the powers that be and hence can be sued to buy allegiance. This is one important way in which the civil service can be politicized. The faithful will get better houses more plots etc.

4.2. Perks cost the government a lot. Houses that are given to government officials are very expensive built in city centers and blocking city development. Maintenance of cars and houses can be big expenses and offer large opportunities for corruption. As is well known from economic research the expense of the perks is much larger than the benefit given to the employee. Cash payment of a much smaller amount could make the employee much better off and the government could save money.

4.3.Perks have become a symbol of power. VIP mentality springs from them. Officials live in government given luxury segregated from people and get treated differently because of perks.

4.4. Officials do not understand the lack of public services given that official perks put them in a VIP cocoon. In their government colonies, they experience less shortages than in neighborhoods. Their fleet of official cars protect them from public transport and the necessity of owning and servicing their own vehicle. Their houses in government neighborhoods never lack utility and other shortages. They don’t have to buy home security in these secure gated estates. In other words, they have a very privileged life style that is totally separated from local reality.

4.5.Perks are not uniformly available and have to be rationed. In the rationing process coalitions form and favors are exchanged. These grouping accumulate power and act as coalitions within official circles. Eventually systems of governance are weakened as such coalitions exert pressure for their own benefits.

The current payment method is dysfunctional, induces corruption and adversely affects productivity. All perks should be abolished. Salaries should be all in cash based on market comparators and indexed. Benefits should include no more than indexed, fair valued pensions and health care.

5. Pension and healthcare benefits should be extended but on modern lines. Both systems should be properly funded by contributions by officials and the government. The funds raised should be properly managed by professional money managers and invested for later payouts. Benefits should be defined, and their proper use should be monitored.

5.1.Pensions should be portable and/or cashable at various stages of a career and not merely at the end of their career. This will allow careers to be better planned and not force people to hang on even when they have lost interest.

5.2.Health care should be better detailed to define the liability of the fund and to let the user know the limits to which they will be helped. Audited procedures must be in place to prevent abuse that is frequently reported. Government funding of care in foreign hospitals should be discontinued altogether.

6. Not all civil service jobs should 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.

7. The colonial system of the civil service that we have inherited is extremely centralizing.Currently, the federal government controls all levels of government. A federal civil servant after recruitment heads up local government from which he moves up to senior levels of the provincial service to eventually running federal departments. government. Following best practice in the administration, each level of government — federal, provincial and local — 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 as inferior to the federal government. This is also the need of devolution. Any movement from one level to another should not be a transfer but a resignation and a new application.

8. Current Rules of Business designate the secretary as a Principal Accounting Officer (POA) of entire monoliths of government, divisions ministries as well as attached departments. The result is an excessive centralization that impedes productivity. In the current system governance is literally in the hands of 5 secretaries, Principle Secretary, Finance Secretary, Cabinet secretary, Finance, and Planning. Governance is built on decentralized mission-oriented agencies and departments with clear resources and accountability. There is no reason to give these secretaries so much power with hardly any accountability. Let each agency head and functional head be recognized as a POA and be given adequate power and resources with very clear lines of accountability and audit rules to deliver public service.

9. Transfers should be recognized 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. Like in many parts of the world, each position is announced and competed for and each officer knows he can’t remain in a position for more than 3 years. If she can’t find a job within the system, she can look elsewhere.

10.Mobility should be viewed as desirable and course, mobility rules will be put in place not just within the civil service but also to facilitate a flow between the public and private sector for required cross fertilization.

11.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 reform itself adapting to a rapidly changing world.

In the past the bureaucracy was a learning researching bureaucracy. This is evidenced even now in the India Office in England where their famous district Gazetteers as well as other reports are kept. We must make the bureaucracy a learning thinking place again. There must be clear research departments in every ministry and agency working on issues of policy preparation and reform and budget proposals. While all departments must be held responsible for regular reports on various issues from data to sector reviews to performance reports.

No meeting at any level must be held only on PowerPoints. Policy notes or situation reports must be mandatory for these. Reports or minutes of such meetings must be made available unless there are top secret items.

12.Training program of government should be reviewed to facilitate a modern professional bureaucracy and move beyond the current approach to develop a generalist, league of gentlemen. The current approach is about a century old and must be updated. Training academies currently are designed to park serving and retired officials and participants consider it either a burden or a party. No serious training takes place.

Would it not be better to let the universities in Pakistan get some of this business? Let the civil service interact with them as well as give some universities business. This will also release valuable real estate that is being wasted in name of training.

Without a process for reform — a serious commission led by thought and intellect and a public consultation — and the adoption of these principles, there will be no serious civil service reform!

But the job of the commission should not be to meet over tea and samosas but to write serious policy notes and white papers after several serious consultations across the country. And these papers and policy notes should be discussed in cabinet and other forums.

A serious process of reform must begin with something like this to hammer out details. Some such list must be discussed point by point in retreats for days and not perfunctorily in an hour of VIP interface.