Corporatising the government

Every prime minister, when inducted into office, comes up with certain ideas which he thinks are brilliant and would revolutionise the working of the government. Shaukat Aziz, from day one, is all set to fix targets for various ministers and federal secretaries and monitor their progress through quarterly reviews.
Chairing the first meeting of the newly installed Federal Cabinet, he regretted the fact that the processing of cases in ministries and departments was unduly prolonged and asked all concerned to be prompt and expeditious in deciding the matters. Law and order, employment generation, stability of prices, good governance and streamlining of judicial process were identified as principal goals of the government.
Performance of the new Cabinet, according to the Prime Minister, would be judged by its achievements and deliveries to the people and efficient management should be the key word. Most of the ministers had already identified their quantifiable goals and targets which would be reviewed quarterly to facilitate and ensure their implementation.
The vision of the government, emerging from these goals and targets, would be shared with the people. Shaukat Aziz also discussed briefly the law and order situation in the country with particular reference to Wana, the recently concluded Pakistan-India talks in New Delhi and shortage of irrigation water with his Cabinet.
These are of course laudable goals and the setting and monitoring of targets at regular intervals could be helpful to inculcate efficiency at various levels of the government. However, what needs to be understood is that it is difficult to create corporate culture in government entities in our country. To start with, whenever a policy decision is to be made, its draft has to be circulated for comments in so many ministries that it takes a long time to be put up to the competent authority for decision.
Further, so many supporting documents are required to be submitted by the concerned department and that too not at one go that the policy decision is often made after a long time and undue delay makes the whole exercise largely irrelevant.
Such practices bog down most of the policy matters. Even if the policy decisions are made at the federal level, these are variously interpreted and often scuttled by the implementing authorities which in most cases happen to be the provincial governments or their subordinate organisations.
Housing sector, for instance, has not made the required progress due to the hurdles at various levels despite its identification as a priority sector. Even otherwise, federal and provincial governments remain at loggerheads most of the time, especially where two governments do not belong to the same political party. And even when laws and policies are enacted the implementation is so weak that it defeats the very purpose of the exercise. More than the elected officials, it is the bureaucrats who need to become facilitators. PM Aziz needs to focus on giving these officials job security but put in place a system of reward and punishment that is standard practice in a corporate world instead of the routine annual confidential reports, largely innocuous, as now prevalent in the government. There is a dire need for the citizen to feel a change in his interaction with government functionaries.
While we wish and pray for Shaukat Aziz to devise a proper mechanism for crossing these hurdles and running the government like a corporate sector entity to provide relief and efficient governance to the common man, it would be a folly to underestimate the constraints. Whatever the arguments of government functionaries, it is always better to have a lean government for proper co-ordination, clear focus and speedy action on various issues. Unfortunately, Shaukat Aziz is saddled with such a big army of ministers, state ministers, advisers, parliamentary secretaries etc that it would be difficult for him to monitor their achievements on individual basis or lack of it. Even a class teacher would find it difficult to teach and monitor individual students' progress if the size of the class exceeds thirty.
Besides, if the Prime Minister becomes really serious about his monitoring role, he would be left with no time to attend to other important business of the state. Also, we are at a loss to figure out what he is going to do with the erring ministers who fail to meet his expectations. In Citibank, he had an almost absolute right to punish or reward his subordinates, but most of his ministers have been nominated by their respective party heads, probably given a nod by the President. As such, they do not enjoy their ministerial positions during his pleasure.