To the best of my knowledge, there will hardly be any civilian govt dept having up-to-date SOPs.
LAHORE: I have read with interest three of Shahid Javed Burki’s recent articles regarding the country and its governance, published on February 3, 10 and 17. It appears that we want to repeat all the mistakes of the past when it comes to our governance structure. We need to move away from mechanical approaches and need to recognise that our failures occur at the very basic level where plans need to be implemented.
Defining vision, mission, goals, objectives and strategies is an intellectual effort. What we need to be careful about is that there is no void between our thoughts and actions. Unless this void is taken care of, there will be no reliable, up-to-date route maps for how work is to be accomplished. To the best of my knowledge, there will hardly be any civilian government department having up-to-date Standard Operating Procedures for the various tasks that they are supposed to perform. Because of this, we have over-legislated in many spheres.
An up-to-date definition of how work is to be processed gives protection to all who are concerned with the proper functioning of the government. There seem to be no budget allocations made for updating procedures on a continuous basis. Up-to-date procedural route maps will make it easier for an honest bureaucrat, an honest politician and generally for honest citizens to do their work without hassle.
Masood Hasan
Published in The Express Tribune, March 6th, 2014.
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