Signed, sealed, shelved: why policies rarely benefit public

Public policy is the government's deliberate course of action for solving a public problem. It identifies the objective, assigns responsibility, allocates resources and provides a framework for implementation. At the launch of these glossy public documents cameras click, press releases announce a "new direction". Pakistan currently has, by conservative count, more than thirty active national policies. Most came with a promise that things would now change. The trouble is rarely the quality of the policy. It is that nobody owns what happens after the signatures dry.

The formal policy formulation and approval process is older than most officials now serving in the bureaucracy. Under the Rules of Business, 1973, every Ministry has a defined area of business and a set path for moving an idea from a working paper to a Cabinet decision, clearing Finance on cost and Law on legality along the way. Policies with development or financial implications also pass through the Planning Commission's appraisal system. Where a devolved subject is involved, the Council of Common Interests is meant to weigh in. On paper it is a sound sequence. What it never does is oblige a Ministry to revisit a policy once signed, or tie it to the money needed to carry it out.

Compare this with Singapore. Its Ministries set direction, but implementation sits with statutory boards, such as the Housing Development Board or the Economic Development Board, which hold their own budgets and are judged on delivery, not drafting. Cross-cutting problems that no single Ministry can own, e.g. climate change, population, are handled by a dedicated Strategy Group inside the Prime Minister's Office, precisely so responsibility does not evaporate the moment a policy leaves Cabinet. Singapore does not write better documents. It never separates the writing from the owning.

Pakistan's National Health Vision 2016-2025 expired last year with no comprehensive successor yet published. More than a decade of promised reform closed quietly with no public reckoning of what it delivered. The 2019 Alternative and Renewable Energy Policy set a 30 per cent renewable target for 2030. Two years later, the same Ministry's own Indicative Generation Capacity Expansion Plan projected barely half that share, a target abandoned by the planning desk one floor down in 'A Block' where it was prepared. The 2018 Food Security Policy leaned heavily on FAO, WFP and ICIMOD for its content. The 2021 Climate Policy update was facilitated by UNDP. No comprehensive National Industrial Policy has been adopted since 1991, though subsector policies for autos, textiles, SMEs and electric vehicles have filled some of the gap.

Donor support is valuable, often indispensable, where technical expertise is thin. The trouble starts when Ministries outsource not just specialist analysis but the capacity to think strategically. Consultants leave once the assignment ends, institutional memory leaves with them. The Ministry starts from zero when the next policy cycle arrives. Countries that sustain reform build permanent policy units. Pakistan keeps rebuilding the same capacity through consultants, one document at a time.

Why do Ministries let this happen? Secretaries and senior officers rotate, sometimes less than every two. New Ministers understandably prefer launching initiatives that carry their own political signature over reviving something inherited from a predecessor. System does not reward maintenance. The incentive structure rewards fresh announcements or settling an issue 'before close of office hours today'.

That points to a deeper issue as most policies simply lose functional ownership. Development projects have project directors, financial audits and completion reports. Policies rarely have any equivalent. After approval, it drifts between departments until political attention moves elsewhere, gradually turning from an operating framework into an archival document. This is the difference between government by announcement and government by institution, and Pakistan has built a system that rewards the former.

Introduction of few measures could change this pattern. Embedding a monitoring, evaluation and learning system into every policy document, complete with measurable KPIs and mandatory independent third-party review dates, would keep lapses from going unnoticed. Costing each policy and slotting it into the PSDP or provincial ADPs at the time of Cabinet's approval would stop implementation from stalling for want of funds. Establishing a standing Policy Planning Wing in every Ministry would track progress and let institutional memory outlast the consultants who currently carry it out the door. Ensuring policy custodianship as part of formal handover whenever a new Secretary and Minister takes office would ensure ownership survives the rotation that orphans so many policies midway.

Pakistan does not suffer from a shortage of policies. It suffers from a shortage of institutions willing to implement those policies after the launch ceremony ends. Until governments reward implementation as much as announcement, the country's shelves will keep filling faster than benefits accruing to the public.