Continued from Part-II on October 4, 2018
Moreover, there should be a procedure and a platform common to every department, where a departmental journal is maintained where issues and solutions, in terms of both data and its analysis are disseminated to the public; such information cleared first for being non-sensitive by a competent board within a department.
Also, there should be a one-hour slot daily on PTV (Pakistan Television; state TV) for a designated spokesperson of a particular department to disseminate information about the department’s ongoing work and research, with regard to both administrative and policy aspects. Furthermore, there should be a rotational policy of departments, across provinces and the federal level, in this regard, as per a pre-decided schedule, so that all departments get a chance to be on air at least once a month. Also, the opportunity of coming on TV should be for public servants working at the tertiary level and above, with enough exposure and understanding of issues on one hand, and on the other, adequate experience to be able to explain the issues and opportunities facing a department in an appropriate way.
In addition to other aspects, many of which have been discussed earlier here, to inspire greater efficiency among public servants, requires a well-functioning physical environment. Physical architecture of working environment of public servants needs to be modernized, which should be uniform across departments and provinces, including the federal level. Moreover, the whole working environment needs to shift towards (electronic government or) e-government.
At the same time, a minister should sit in his respective department, that is, his/her office should be located within their respective ministry/department. Similarly, a particular Chief Minister and in turn the Prime Minister, should have only one office and that too located in their respective secretariats; apart from one camp office at home. Moreover, both of them should have their office in the secretariat area. A secretariat itself should possibly contain all other departmental/ministerial offices located in one place. All of this for bringing efficiency gains and cutting on costs.
Administrative districts, at the federal and provincial capitals to start with, and then over the medium to long term, rolled over to all the districts, should be the way forward, as one of the innovative ways to make the ‘Naya’ (or new) Pakistan. Therefore, in one administrative district there should be one decided pattern of layout of departments, so that there is efficiency, on the lines similar to the planned administrative district like ‘Putrajaya’ in Malaysia. Moreover, departments in one administrative district should all have one uniform layout. Overall, the administrative districts will allow efficiency gains both in terms of physical contiguity and reduced costs for running the affairs of the government.
For these architectural needs, the government should formulate a high powered committee within the overall Council of Common Interest (CCI) to bring forward a consensus based plan, after approval from respective Chief Ministers, and finally for the Prime Minister to then approve. In the same vein, work should be started for formulating the previously indicated (in Part-I of this article series) federal and provincial recruitment commissions, and the recruitment commission regulator, and for readying other needed work for the overall public service reform.
Furthermore, the main building of NADRA (National Database and Registration Authority), of the federal capital, provincial capitals, or of a particular district, should also be housed within the respective administrative district of that district. On the same lines, the offices of Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) should be located in their respective administrative district. The physical contiguity of these offices is important for better access to data and for resolving any data related issues.
A particular ministry/department should have an eating area, with standardized prices for all the eating areas applied within one administrative district. A special food committee composed of nutritionists, and duplicated in every administrative district, should make a standardized eating plan, where expenditure made more and a less within a similar kind of budget (approved by a parliamentary committee; randomness in prices of a particular area bringing that approximate budget limits). Also, there should be a standardized market (that is same layout of one particular market across all administrative districts) for purchasing government’s work needed products, so that time and transportation costs could be saved. Moreover, for each administrative district there should be one common park, apart from a well equipped standardized gym and associated rest rooms for each department.
The entry and leaving times of public servants should be monitored through automatic, electronically modern ways. The departmental security offices should hold this information and is reflected in a particular employees’ official online account that could also be accessed by the reporting boss and the departmental in charge; whose performance is in turn, monitored by another high up, and so on.
Hence, there should be unique but uniform official online accounts of each public servant, with different levels of access to the account, as per requirement and seniority clearance and needs. Apart for information of the employee in terms of his current and past positions, his research interests, his publications and other produced reports (solely or in a team), the account should hold for every employee all the cleared information for his level to be available there, including, for example, information on reading materials, trainings information, other online resources related with his position of work; with online secure avenues/channels to share information and work requests through that secured intranet, with the team leader and other colleagues. Also, there should be available online communication channels to contact other departments and ministries through that intranet. To improve upon efficiency, the account should also be accessed through one common government app available on mobiles and other android devices as well.
At the same time, there should be a federal- and provincial corruption intelligence unit, dedicated to obtain direct messages from each employee through a secured link from his/her official account, to report on corruption incidence under the overall ‘whistle blower act’ of the PTI led government; where the identity of the whistle blower to be kept secret. Also, while the federal and provincial corruption units to coordinate with regard to this anti-corruption effort; it would make sense to place these units under the federal Ministry of Interior, so that they remain under the direct control of the federal government.
(To be continued…)