Guest Column | Leveraging bureaucracy for effective public service delivery

The Constitution divides the government into three branches, the legislature, executive, and judiciary, with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. The bureaucracy does not merely mean Indian Administrative Service and the Provincial Civil Services. Notwithstanding the constraints and problems attributed to bureaucracy, which arise mainly due to trust deficit, there is a need to leverage bureaucracy for effective public service delivery. The 10-step framework that can lead to success in this direction requires that the political executives should 1) define the policy or the task with clear objectives and outcomes; 2) fix the premise of the policy ambitions that is sustainable; 3) consider evidence, data, and precedents without making these a bottleneck for changes or innovations if so required; 4) specify the ground rules for implementation; 5) seek performance based on the rules; 6) change the rules if so required, but their violation should not be allowed; 7) specify the roles and responsibilities of all players in implementation; 8) insist on professionalism; 9) prescribe a review and monitoring system for regular follow-up and mid-course corrections; and 10) define the reward and punishment systems that encourage the truth, the right, the better performance, and allow the wrongs to be righted before punishment, which should be the last action. Such an orderly approach shall enable the bureaucracy to deliver on the assigned task as per government policies without many of the misgivings observed these days.