Second of a three-part series on redesigning Pakistan’s civil service.
Pakistan’s civil service cannot be redesigned only by changing how officers are recruited, trained and promoted. Reform must also address where governmental authority should reside. A professional civil service concentrated at the federal and provincial levels will remain distant from the citizen unless administration, policing and financial authority are devolved to where most public services are actually delivered. PAS should be phased out as an occupational group, with future recruitment ending. The district administrative functions presently performed by PAS should be devolved to locally recruited professional administrative services. Ordinary policing should likewise move to the district level.
Creating more provinces or speaking endlessly about empowered local governments will achieve little if the administrative, policing and financial authority through which government actually reaches citizens remains centralized. Political devolution without administrative and fiscal devolution is incomplete devolution. Most services that determine everyday quality of life are required at the citizen's doorstep: education, healthcare, security, justice, sanitation and municipal services. The administration responsible for delivering and coordinating them should therefore be as close and accountable to the people as possible.
But responsibility without the financial resources to discharge it is meaningless. While the bulk of their resources will necessarily continue to come from the federation, local governments should additionally have meaningful authority to tax and raise their own revenues and determine how those revenues are spent. The NFC framework should be redesigned so that an appropriate and predictable share of national revenues flows through to local governments. Real devolution requires administration, police and finance to move together.
The NFC framework should be redesigned so that an appropriate and predictable share of national revenues flows through to local governments. Real devolution requires administration, police and finance to move together.
The same principle applies strongly to policing. Law and order begins in neighborhoods, where citizens have the greatest interest in keeping their communities safe. Properly organized neighborhood-watch arrangements can connect communities to local police and make citizens participants in the security of their own localities.
Local recruitment would strengthen that relationship. An administrative or police officer recruited principally from the area has a personal stake in what happens there, understands its communities and geography, and is more immediately accountable to the society being served. The present system frequently does the opposite: officers can be recruited from one end of Pakistan, posted briefly to another, and then moved elsewhere. District administration and ordinary policing should therefore become local professional services accountable to elected local government. This is more than administrative decentralization. It changes the relationship between citizen and state by bringing authority closer to where government is actually experienced. Devolution, however, does not mean weakening the centre. Two areas illustrate functions that require strong national capacity.
The first is management of the economy. It would be neither practical nor desirable to create a separate occupational group for every ministry. Professional groups will therefore invariably serve several related ministries and divisions, while retaining specializations within them. Pakistan needs a new Finance & Economy (F&E) Group bringing together the principal economic functions of government, but with recruitment and careers reflecting the different expertise they require.
Finance, planning and economic affairs may draw substantially on economics and public finance; revenue on taxation, accounting and audit; commerce and trade on international trade and trade law; industry on industrial and business expertise; and investment on banking, finance and business. F&E would therefore be an umbrella professional group, not another generalist service. Officers could move where their qualifications and experience are relevant, but membership of F&E would not entitle them to occupy every economic post, much less positions in unrelated fields such as health, education, energy or information technology.
The second area is investigation, intelligence and crime that transcends local boundaries. If ordinary policing is devolved, Pakistan simultaneously needs a federal institution capable of acting when criminal activity crosses district boundaries or threatens national security. For this purpose, it is proposed that the Federal Investigation Agency and Intelligence Bureau should be merged into a new Federal Investigation & Intelligence Bureau (FIIB).
FIIB would perform national investigation and intelligence functions, while also setting common standards and training requirements for district police services. Local police would remain responsible for everyday law and order; FIIB would have nationwide jurisdiction where matters extend beyond a district or acquire a national dimension. The principle is simple: policing should be local where the problem is local, but federal where the problem is national. The purpose of devolution is not to weaken the state. It is to place authority at the level where it can most effectively be exercised.
To be continued.