The government's commitment to build the capacity of civil servants through qualitative improvement in the training environment reached an important stage on Thursday with the holding of first meeting of Board of Governors of National School of Public Policy.
The meeting was chaired by President General Pervez Musharraf as Chairman of the Board of Governors. The Board of Governors includes prominent academicians and personalities from both public and private sectors.
The Board of Governors discussed important agenda items and took decisions to lay foundation of training environment comparable to the best in the world.
The President emphasised the critically important role that National School of Public Policy has to play in order to ensure that Pakistani civil servants were equipped to meet the challenges of globalisation, good governance and service delivery at the grassroots as well as strategic levels.
It may be recalled that recognising critical role of training to enhance professional expertise and skills capability along modern lines, the government had decided in 2002 to establish National School of Public Policy as an independent institution for education, training and research on Public Policy. The existing training institutions for civil servants including Civil Services Academy, the National Institutes of Public Administration and Pakistan Administrative Staff College have been integrated into the National School of Public Policy.
The school is designed to reform the training methods, syllabi, quality of education and training for civil servants and to consolidate fragmented training in fields such as public policy, law, economies, finance, management sciences, human rights, democracy and gender mainstreaming.
It is tasked to address the capacity and technical skills gap in the civil service and focus on professional development of federal and provincial civil servants including those working in districts.