The Changing Face of Public Management

There will be absolutely changed conditions under which public managers will operate in the future, some of the areas of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that they will be required to possess, and some of the pathways public managers might explore in order to move toward the future.

There will be an extraordinary explosion of new knowledge and technological innovations, especially in the areas of information sciences, genetics, materials, instrumentation, automation, and space. Our public managers will wade into an age of extraordinary technological change and have to accommodate themselves and the institutions to dramatically different bodies of knowledge and technological innovations.

They will not only have to cope with and employ their expanded knowledge and technological capacity, they will have to learn to use this knowledge and technological capacity for the benefit of society. In the technological world of the future, there will be even greater temptations for them to be captured by technology, to fall prey to “technological imperative,” and to allow rational technical interests to supercede human concerns and those of values. Finding ways of employing advanced technologies so as to enhance rather than restrict their capacity for leadership, creativity, and personal responsibility will be a serious challenge.

In the future, knowledge and information will prevail. And if information is power, then those who have information will indeed have power. But who will have information? Information will be increasingly centralized and controlled and marketed through traditional economic and political processes. It will be widely distributed throughout society, so that increasing rather than decreasing numbers of people will have information and in turn have power. Such a possibility will lead to “the twilight of hierarchy,” to be inevitable.

Combining these issues, we can safely predict that the knowledge or information that our public managers will be able to access will be tremendous, to the point that the quantity of information will no longer be the most important issue. Rather the key question will be how to organize this information for human purposes. This means that public administration will have to learn to organize information in a fashion that will facilitate the pursuit of important public purposes. The great challenge will be to organize information so that we can enhance the process of democratic decision-making, of consensus building, and of dialogue and deliberation.

There’s no question that we will have the capacity to organize information for dramatic new public purposes, to restructure our structures of governance in dramatic ways. But what will our choices be? Imagine a computer in Islamabad that could reach out into every home, so that on any occasion that a major policy decision was required, an appropriate message could go out to all the citizens and their answers could guide public policy - a process that would approximate pure democracy.

The globalization of society is obvious today, though in twenty-five years or so, we may experience trans-globalization or beyond, as the frontiers of the oceans and space are extended even further. Already we are thinking more in global terms. However, our managers are still thinking in terms of traditional institutions operating in a new global context. They are not yet asking how they reconfigure businesses and governments so as to carry out a global vision. How do they encourage businesses and governments to assume global responsibilities rather than those defined in terms of one’s own self interest? For example, how can Pakistan move toward sustainable development and environmental justice on a global basis?

One obvious casualty of the global age may be the nation-state, replaced not necessarily by a new global or interplanetary federation but possibly by new forms of governance far beyond those we can imagine today.

In future our public administration should know the importance of “responsibilities” rather than “functions” of government. While a large part of the current worldwide debate over privatization or outsourcing speaks to the question of which “functions” belong where, the new debate will necessarily focus on public responsibilities and speak in a language of ethics, citizenship and the public interest.

In reinvented government or the new public management, customers shall replace citizens - or, to put it differently, the integrative role of citizenship has been reduced to the narrow self-interest of customership - in government as in business.

Indeed, we think the job of all public managers will increasingly be more than directing or managing our public organizations. It will be not merely “steering” or “rowing” but “building the boat.” The new public manager will construct networks of varied interests that can work effectively to solve public problems. In doing so, it will be the job of the public administrator to promote pluralism, to create opportunities for constructive dissent, to preserve that which is distinctive about individuals and groups, and to provide an opportunity for diverse groups to share in establishing future directions for the community. The administrator will play a substantial role in diminishing polarization, teaching diversity and respect, building coalitions, resolving disputes, negotiating and mediating. The work of the top public managers will thus be - to build community.

There are two broad areas that public managers will need to explore in order to fashion a response to the trends. These emerging trends will turn public management both “inside-out” and “upside-down.” Public management will be turned “inside-out” as the largely internal focus of management in the past is replaced by an external focus, specifically a focus on citizens and citizenship. Public management will be turned “upside-down” as the traditional top-down orientation of the field is replaced - not necessarily by a bottom-up approach, but by a system of shared leadership.

In the past public administration has been largely focused on what happens within the public bureaucracy. The future will require that it dramatically refocus its attention on the world outside, particularly the world of citizens and citizenship. Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation

Bureaucracy and Change

While new technologies, new paradigms of governance, and new management structures are being put forward the bureaucracy of Pakistan is driving into the future using only rear view mirror.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, change is everywhere. The reality of yesterday proves wrong today, and nobody really knows what will be the truth tomorrow. Social, political and economic change has come fast like a small boat dancing on the waves. People feel that they do not have any influence In the mainstream of this environmental milieu, people of Pakistan are detesting bureaucracy, from inside and outside: red tape, punctiliousness, delay, extra social overhead, unresponsive monopoly of authority; professional deficiency; and obsolete policy planning.

Below the politically appointed ministers is the civil service. Efforts to reform and modernize the traditional civil service were never made to improve the professional competencies of senior civil servants. The prevailing unanswered issues demonstrate that the training acquired by government officers at NIPA or Pakistan Administrative Staff College is ineffective, redundant and unproductive. Thus the need to reform has fallen behind its expansion in size and functions, making Pakistan an over-administered society. All governments pared back the state's control over the economy but failed to restrain the growth of the state bureaucracy and allowed its standards and efficiency to decline.

Our bureaucracy tries to fulfill government strategies, which had been formulated years ago, under totally different baseline conditions. Service quality is often not more than an empty phrase. The competence of our bureaucracy can be measured from the fact that it could not workout a policy for urbanization. Consequently, luckless consumers continue to be treated worse than one-time colonial rulers. Everyone has tales of dealing with bureaucrats who seem utterly unsympathetic to real problems and explain why the rules don’t allow a solution.

Our bureaucracy has utterly failed in using creativity in policy making. Thus, it could not generate new ideas for issues like unemployment, economic development and poverty alleviation. Management creativity is about using simple techniques to find innovative solutions to prevailing problems. And creativity, which is extraterrestrial skill to our bureaucracy, isn't just nice-to-have. In a fast change, furious public administration, it's a matter of survival.

Change happens. And while we can't control much of the world changing around us, we should know how to respond. We can choose to anticipate and embrace changes or resist them. Resisting change is like trying to push water upstream. Our bureaucracy is recognized as the one that resists change. It's much harder for bureaucracy to admit to its own change resistance.

Pakistan’s bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status. (Status Quo Ante Erat is, literally, state of things as it was before, meaning the present current, existing state of affairs. "Maintaining the Status quo" usually connotes to "keep things the way they presently are").

There are some problems with bureaucracies: red tape, duplication, and waste. Red tape is the existence of complex rules and procedures that must be followed to get something done. Duplication occurs when two government agencies seem to be doing the same thing, such as when the Customs Service and the Narcotics Control Board both attempt to intercept illegally smuggled drugs.

Our bureaucratic structure has failed owing to lack of management scientists, competent economists, and outstanding professionals. Brain drain is another reason. No institution has ever attempted to develop a national agglomeration of competent managers. All academic institutions are ineffective.

Today's bureaucracy continues without an object, multiple layers of unneeded staff, endless reports with little value, and gridlock. The basic managerial models and practices within government are behind those used today. The system itself facilitates entrenchment, mediocrity, decay and inertia. Given these assertions as premises it should be explored what can be learned and translated from the private sector's organizational structures and practices to cause a renaissance in bureaucracy. Organizational schema as well as leadership and managerial practices can be explored for their potential to contribute to bureaucracy.

The amount of information and data is doubling every few years. Even in poorer economies Intranet is being used for inter-department data transfer, files exchange, and information share, but our bureaucracy is far from the fundamental concepts of Management Information Service. In this situation of sheer chaos, suddenly computer network offers a new order. When the world has largely benefited from the fruits of computer use, a question might be asked: do our government managers know computer basics?

The bureaucracy of Pakistan should move away from rule governance to value-based management. Value-based management seeks to give employees more freedom when carrying out their job functions. In a time of radical change, increased public expectations and many new tasks, the bureaucratic structure needs to be able to provide a flexible service. Rules and procedures, which are far too rigid, can prevent the public obtaining a service that matches their needs and wishes. But if value-based management is to work, a common set of values is required.

The goal - or vision - for value-based management should be the set of values adopted by Pakistan’s civil bureaucracy. These values require that Islamabad, as the capital and influential center for South Asian Region, must act as the driving force behind human, cultural and economic development. It is imperative that our bureaucracy can provide services, which transforms it to a role model.

We need to inculcate professionalism, expertise, competence and systems to make our civil services, meet the realities of the 21st century. This is high time to part ways from poor governance, inertia, lack of knowledge that spawned a culture in which wasteful expenditures, leakages of resources and low efficiency are the norm. Sound policies cannot see the light of day until our institutional capacity is strengthened and reoriented. Change in the brass tacks of our bureaucracy provides a way into the future. (www.asifjmir.com)