Workable Performance Management System for Government of Pakistan

Abstract

There is a lot of debate in Pakistan on and about the poor performance of the government and the bureaucracy. The performance of the government is marred by the corrupt practices, inefficiencies and waste. The political leadership and bureaucracy both are publically called corrupt and stories appear on news, media channels every now and then of the corruption scandals, misuse of authority and wasteful working. We rank the lowest amongst the nations in terms of basic government services like education and healthcare. This paper aims to highlight the reasons of this poor performance and recommends a workable performance management program which can help the government in improving the performance of its various functions. It also gives an over view of the current practices of performance management system in the public sector of Pakistan and discusses briefly the history of performance management in the modern world. Most importantly we discuss the challenges we face while implementing a performance management system in government sector, what are the differences between a private sector performance management program and the problems we face when we implement it in public sector in a developing world specially in a country like Pakistan. The challenges become even more profound when we face a democracy where the political interference has destroyed the core of the bureaucratic structure. But all is not lost since many reforms over the past few decades put in place by successive governments have at-least paved the way for a more progressive performance management program which can help Pakistan deliver on its promise of becoming a great Islamic republic. The Islamic republic of Pakistan.