Today in Pakistan there is a need for an efficient and small but not a decimated government. Such a government is a modern day requirement for developing a competitive advantage over other nations within the region. To achieve these ideals public sector institutions would require talented human resources which are equipped with knowledge and skill sets congruent with the compulsions of the present century.
The extent to which the above objective is being met, an assessment of the current portfolio of training menus offered by different training institutions in the public sector will be imperative. In this article we attempt to undertake a prescriptive diagnosis of the current training and development programs offered in the public sector and then suggest what ought to be done to equip the available inventory of human resources with best practices in various functional areas of management
It is rather sad that the current practice of employment in public sector institutions is not based on the kind of talent that is required to make our institutions efficient and cost effective.- a sine qua non for smaller, leaner and efficient governments. An assessment of employment patterns in this sector, however, suggest that a large number of personnel are employed in the clerical cadre. Not only is their basic education of low level, they also lack the motivation and willingness to improve. And their number is too large. Thetraining opportunities available to this group of employees also lack relevance, rigor and doesn’t make any difference in their on-the-job performance. So as a first step if public sector institutions have to enhance their performance to have an efficient government the present employment pattern at lower tiers of these institutions has to be radically altered. Gradually their number also needs to be reduced for cutting the size of the government.
For training programs to serve as enablers for individual as well as aggregate institutional performance improvement, it is of critical importance to undertake periodically a Training Need Assessment (TNA).Most of the public sector training programs either don’t expose participants to best practices in relevant areas or are of little functional utility to them. These twin objectives can only be realized if various training outfits assess the training needs of potential customers for its relevance and also continuously improve the design of the programs to make them compatible with current organizational needs and to integrate best practices in their course offerings.
For making training relevant, functionally usable and based on best practices, three facets are important. These consists of a) design of the program in terms of what to include and why to include different topics/themes in a course, b) development that envisages the development of contextually relevant training materials for use in a course and also to identify materials which include best practices in the area and c) delivery of training which promotes a pedagogical method engaging actively participants as part of a learning community.
Unfortunately, the current training programs offered in public sector institutions are deficient on the above first two counts. There is a lot of cut-and- paste approach as far as the designing of courses was concerned and that too based on dated material/literature. Given the present directing staff in most of public sector institutions, they are mostly from different services with no scholarly work to show to justify their postings in these institutions.
There is a dire need of training programs for the public sector which are based on participant feedback and needs, The usefulness of any training program can fully be realized if there are periodic feedback sessions and validations by those for whom the trainings are designed,
An effort to provide training programs based on local and international best practices to the public sector is being made through the Center of Governance and Public Management (CGPM) at LUMS.
CGPM which has come into being as a part of an agreement with a donor agency has developed a host of training programs which are based on the training needs of those participating in its programs. These programs are continually improvised based on the feedback received from the participants to ensure that these serve their needs. Periodically the participants are invited for a daylong session to validate whether the knowledge gained was relevant and useful on their jobs or not. Thus, the participants’ feedback and validation meetings reassure the Centre about the usefulness of its courses.
The CGPM can boast that its programs are based on the-best-in-class philosophy. The faculty engaged in designing and developments of these programs are academics of international repute and had developed contextually appropriate materials for use in different programs. Parts of these materials are also based on best practices so as to equip the participants with knowledge and skills which are functionally relevant and are also based on best practices model.
The CGPM has developed an interesting portfolio of programs to hone up the skill sets of participants who come to attend its programs. These programs comprise Procurement Management-an area of high importance in project implementation to ensure transparency in all procurement transactions. A kindred program offered is called Procurement Audit- this is also of high importance and ensures that all transactions were transparent and allowed free and open competition in the acquisition of goods and services in project implementation.
Public Finance is another highly sought after course in the menu of CGPM. Prudent utilization of scarce tax payers’ money for creating public goods and encouraging third party audits for ensuring accountability and transparency are the high points of this training program. Corruption in public sector is perceived to endemic. Most of the time those alleged to be involved in graft leaves no evidence to prove their guilt. Forensic Science is an area which offers help to trace the links. Considering the seriousness of corruption in public sector a course had been specially designed as how to conduct Forensic Audit. This course also in high demand and was the first of its kind offered at CGPM.
We hear perpetual gripes about the lack of timely completion of public sector funded programs. There are also numerous complaints about cost over-runs in the completion of these projects. A very important tool to ensure that project is completed on time and at the original cost is Monitoring & Evaluation. Although every project documents stresses its need but it is mostly neglected area. The CGPM had also designed and developed this program which was being successfully offered.
Last but not least, changes in the working of our bureaucratic agencies should be an on-going activity. But we are all aware of the fact that bureaucrats resist to the core any attempt to change their way of working and that they have become victims of so called SOPs. Leadership and Institutional Change is yet another program that is offered by the Centre.
To sum up this brief narrative on training and development, the need for public sector institutions to revisit the current portfolios of their training programs is not only essential but also urgent. In order to provide contextually relevant and functionally useful training programs a thorough reassessment of both the programs as wells the directing staff deployed in public sector training institutions is the need of the hour to move towards a smaller and efficient government system. Needless to stress ill-equipped and bloated bureaucracy is a stumbling block to these objectives.
The writer is a professor of leadership at Lahore University of Management Sciences and can be reached at [email protected]
