The general public perceives the public sector as corrupt, incompetent, inefficient and ineffective in the face of emerging challenges. A public sector change, to radically improve service delivery, is ‘long overdue’.

At the international level, 100 public sector drivers have been identified for change. Keeping the current state of affairs and the history of the subcontinent, particularly Pakistan, in focus, I have selected some key drivers that could radically change the public sector.

Subcontinental bureaucracy has failed to evolve even after gaining ‘freedom’ from the British Empire. The distance between the state and the people has also continues unabridged.

There should be a ‘paradigm shift in the philosophy of bureaucracy’ from its colonial day’s mandate of ‘facilitating rule from a distance’ to ‘facilitating service delivery’. Training programmes for bureaucracy should be re-defined accordingly.

The system has failed to protect the constitutionally guaranteed rights of the citizens. For many people, survival lies in corruption by option and/or by compulsion.

Corruption grows top-down and over time has become a societal, economic and political norm.

Alternative Dispute Resolution: The weaknesses and limitations of the judicial process have resulted in the development of Alternative Dispute Resolution mechanisms. These mechanisms consist of mediation, conciliation, negotiation and arbitration and have been successfully institutionalised globally.

The ADR mechanism is faster, less costly and more effective in resolving disputes. In the developed world only those cases are taken to court which fail in the ADR process. Between 80pc to 90pc of all civil cases in developed states are resolved through ADR mechanisms.

More alternative dispute resolution platforms should be established and strengthened by law.

Re-structuring the economy: The state of the country’s economy truly reflects an absence of vision, policy programmes and a defective planning process. However, effective planning is not possible with the quality of highly questionable data available.

Data quality also depends on the level of documentation of the economy. As the size of the ‘black economy’ is about 2.5 times that of the documented economy, data monitoring is poor while tax evasion and financial and consumer frauds have become a serious problem.

Promoting businesses: An improved enabling environment for businesses should be introduced and monitoring mechanisms should be simplified; the cost of doing business should be minimised while genuine businesses and industries should be facilitated.

Venture capital should be developed for providing financial avenues for SMEs; and the registration process of intellectual property rights should be simplified and made cost effective to promote creativity and innovation.

Wastage of public money: A large sum of public money is wasted on unnecessary activities, functions, products and services. Similarly, leaks in public expenditure are also common. Cost over-run has become a norm, and the government keeps escalating announced project estimates with no accountability for project delays, mismanagement and cost-over runs.

A strategic capacity development plan for government organisations should be developed to prepare accounts and financial reporting mechanisms in line with international public sector accounting standards (IPSAS).

Re-thinking education: Our educational and vocational training system is not linked to the societal and economic needs of the country. Private universities and institutions seem to have no interest in aligning the two.

The vast majority of human resource working in the industry is improperly educated and trained. Very few have the privilege of being professionally trained by their employers either locally or abroad.

It has been forgotten that the society and economy are run by ‘technicians’: people trained in a specific trade or vocation.

Education should be declared a ‘national building strategy’ and all related policies should be built around it. A socio-economic assessment of the country should be done and its needs in terms of ‘goods and services’ be identified and assessed.

More vocational training centres should be established to bridge the technological gap.

The writer is the chairman of SME Board of ICMA.

Published in Dawn, Economic & Business, March 27th, 2017