Public service reforms - II

Parliaments at the federal and provincial levels should make laws pertaining to the formulation of respective recruitment commissions (indicated in part-I of this series of articles by this writer) so that the needed shape and legitimacy could be obtained for these proposed institutions.

The recruitment commissions will primarily recruit people in public service at three stages or 'entry points', with the possibility of lateral entries at any level on need basis. Here, the first entry point is the 'initial level', which would cater to jobs of generic nature such as those of peons and messenger-boys within a department. This level would require minimal to some education/training, and sub-categorization of this initial level could be recruiting people with a) no education at the formal level, and without any certification indicating skills training, but rather having only limited work experience, at one end of the spectrum and b) candidates applying for jobs that require primary, and up to secondary level of education, for instance jobs of stenographers, receptionists, etc.

The second entry point will be at the 'medium level'. Recruitment at this level would require more educational attainment - intermediate to bachelor degrees - and skills. Hence, the nature of jobs would require greater responsibility and technical training. The third entry point thereafter would be called the 'tertiary level' with higher job pre-requisites - professional bachelor degrees, for instance, engineers, doctors, and other possessing masters-level qualification in other cases - than the medium level. The fourth entry point will be in the shape of 'advance level' where recruitment requirements would include candidates with doctoral degrees, and among other cases high educational attainment and significant work experience (but are not holders of doctorates).

At the same time, rather than having central superior services for a select number of job fields, as indicated earlier, there should be one public service pertaining to all jobs with regard to serving people. There may still also be no need to call them government servants or public servants, which does not necessarily sound respectable, but rather public service providers or public service officers. Hence, the public service should encapsulate all fields of work serving the public by the government, and may make sense to have all entry levels being proposed.

In addition, from the medium level of entry and above, there should be a 'fast stream'. Here, the fast stream would enable quicker vertical movement for the employees of this stream within a particular field of work, who would have greater financial and pension benefits than the routine stream since they have greater and more technically-demanding responsibilities to perform. This is also because graduation into fast stream would require attaining good service record in terms of achievements, and passing a competitive exam for the fast stream.

The employees working at the initial level, and aspiring to qualify for appearing in the fast stream exam for the medium level, will first have to become eligible through educational attainments either taking part-time exams to complete a degree programme, or where applicants successfully completing on-the-job foundation courses and/or skills trainings. They will also be required to work in the medium level for an appropriate amount of time, and then can become eligible for appearing in the fast stream exam in the same manner as those stipulated for others in the routine service above the initial level. Similarly, people working in the regular stream at levels above the initial level can strive for entering fast stream by appearing in the associated exam, held as per its timeline.

Having said that there should be a fixed number of opportunities available to an employee within a particular level (above the initial level that is) for taking the fast stream exam where, for example, two to three times in medium level, and similarly in higher levels for the employees of routine stream. At the same time, graduation to fast stream should not be a one-way ticket, and evaluation boards after an appropriate time-span should re-evaluate all fast-stream employees for allowing them to continue, or putting them back in the routine stream. Moreover, such demotions should throw up an opportunity for the employee to re-enter fast-stream on the occasion of another evaluation board, but here too such opportunities are made available only for a limited number of times.

A defining feature of the reformed public service, apart from doing away with central superior service, and becoming all-encompassing in terms of the entire range of fields falling under public service, would be to divide public service into administrative and technocratic services. This means that for any field, for instance, from health sector to economists to environmentalists to transport service, to public administration, to police service, among others, all would have these two streams individually, so that the requirements of administration and policy formulation could be met within each and every field of public service. At the same time, there would be an active research department within the policy side to provide information on better actions going forward, and the level of past performance, to each of the administrative and policy-related public service of that particular department.

Moreover, to maintain the element of fairness to all, all public servants will be first enter routine service, with no one is allowed to directly take fast stream exam, and parachuting straight into fast stream because doing that falls into unfair treatment to the regular stream; unlike the current case at hand, where candidates directly enter into an elite cadre at a reasonably advanced vertical stage of service in the shape of central superior services without going through the routine government service, and then possibly graduating into a fast stream with that experience and time spent in the routine service.

Also, in line with the earlier line of argument, competitive exams will only be open to people of routine service, requiring everyone entering public service to initially spend appropriate amount of time as an employee of routine service. In addition, unlike the current central superior service exam as the fast stream exam will be more technically aligned to a particular field of job.

At the same time, contractual employment should only be need-based, and should not be for longer durations of time, for which there should be an assessment made in the shape of judgement on quality of his or her work as a contractual employee, and if need be placing him or her before the requirement of an exam, and/or interview (depending on the nature and seniority of a particular job at hand) at an appropriate point in time, and the contractual employment is regularized into the routine stream with the persons then are afforded the same opportunity to graduate to the fast stream in case they wish to pursue that course of action in the same way as available for any other employee in the routine service above initial level.

Long-term contractual jobs should not be allowed because given the need for the contracted person is long-term, and in case the person can pass the assessment to graduate to the routine level, then the services of the contracted person should only be continued to be taken by the government under routine service and associate benefits.

This should also be the case for people working in the state-owned enterprises (SOEs), in terms of people being contracted are entering employment for the first time, or ones that have experience working in the private sector and are contracted from there. Moreover, SOEs also need to be governed through the same mechanism of routine, and fast stream service fields characterised by a condition of entry points and lateral entries that also applies to other public service employment is followed. Having said that, in the case of public-private partnerships, the private side of it follows its own rules and regulations as they fall under the labour market other than those of the public sector.

(To be continued)

(The writer holds PhD in Economics from the University of Barcelona; he previously worked at International Monetary Fund)

He tweets@omerjaved7