PAKISTAN cannot become a modern state as long as its bureaucracy continues to be organised around hierarchy, seniority and generalist recruitment.

The system has become better at managing careers than solving problems. It rewards position rather than expertise and performance, and protects procedure more readily than outcomes. Moreover, a bureaucracy built primarily for routine administration can hardly meet the ever-growing economic, technological, environmental and social challenges confronting the government. It is against this backdrop that a ‘new’ civil service restructuring plan has been unveiled by the planning minister. The plan proposes professional cadres, seeks changes to the CSS examination, opens up........

© Dawn