WB offers funds for improving public sector performance
By Ihtasham ul Haque
ISLAMABAD, Jan 11: The World Bank has told Pakistan it could arrange foreign funding for the organisational and institutional capacity-building of the country's public sector but first it must reform its civil services.
Dawn learnt on Thursday that the World Bank had made it clear that the performance of the public sector could not be improved without reforming the civil services.
It has asked Islamabad to formulate a new strategy for good governance by June this year after a country-wide assessment of the prevailing ills and the existing human resource potential and management approaches.
Initially, the sources said, the World Bank, the Department for International Development (DFID) of Britain and the United Nations could provide financial and technical assistance to help conduct broad-based civil service reforms that had been delayed.
The institutional capacity building, the bank said, would address the formal and informal norms that provide framework of goals and incentives within which the various departments and people operate.
Donor agencies expected that the intervention should focus on institutional strengthening to enhance federal government policy, planning, and resource management; decentralise service delivery; and increase the voice of intended beneficiaries. Beyond the capacity building in welfare departments and bodies themselves, the exercise could also extend to building capacity in the linkages among partner ministries and departments responsible for the delivery of key component of social protection strategy such as health, education, women development, labour, justice etc.
Organisational capacity building, donors believed, will strengthen cooperation processes of various departments and bodies. Similarly, human capacity building will strengthen the skills of individuals and teams to analyse development needs to design and implement strategies, policies and programmes and to deliver services and monitor results. Interventions will initially focus on training for sector staff at all levels of the social welfare system to upgrade specific skills of personnel in government ministries and other agencies, and among service providers such as social workers.
The capacity building to be comprehensive, coherent and sustainable, it has to be based on a thorough capacity needs assessment and analysis conducted with strong stakeholder participation. Specific attention, the bank said, should be paid to the overall human resource management to consider options for broader incentives and systems of encouraging and managing good performance and to retain trainees through improved work condition, pay and carrier prospects and increasing opportunities.
Assessment and analysis will determine development of the capacity building action plan for the social welfare infrastructure that will form the overall capacity building framework. This action plan will then be translated into specific individual capacity building programmes for the various ministries, departments and corporations at all levels.
