An effective public service is crucial to meeting the challenge of sustainable development in any country. Almost everywhere, however, reform and renewal of the public service is needed to successfully achieve the developmental goals of the 21st century.
This paper examines the integration of decentralisation and civil service reforms. Dr Munawwar Alam outlines how the 2001 Devolution of Power Plan (DOPP) in Pakistan was a transformative reform that successfully achieved simultaneous reorganization of both local government and the civil service.
While DOPP in its original form has largely been discontinued since the fall of Pakistan’s last military regime in 2006, some of its core elements have helped consolidate significant, and long overdue, local government reforms in Pakistan. One of the highlights of Dr Alam’s paper is the menu of key lessons in reform that it offers for decentralizing initiatives elsewhere.
Munawwar Alam. 2015. Integrating Civil Service Reform with Decentralisation: A Case Study. UNDP. Singapore: UNDP Global Centre for Public Service Excellence.
