Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Thursday, March 28th, 2024

Afghanistan’s Public Administration in Need of Good Managers

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Afghanistan’s Public Administration in Need  of Good Managers

One of the most serious problems in Afghanistan of today is management, or to be precise, lack of quality management in its sprawling public administration system. Management, today, is both a science and an art. Managers and executives in top business schools around the world pin attention and resources on learning the latest and the most modern principles and paradigms of management in heavily specialized fields.

In both the public and private sector, managers have come to be known and respected as a unique breed on whom the existence of entire organizations, people and even nations depend. Today and in private sector, specialization and state of the art practices in modern management are explored in depth and in great detail in order to equip the managers with the best and the latest in management know-how.

In the West and in recent decades, private sector has come to conquer the "commanding heights" of economy. Gone are the days when the government and the public sector were involved in even the smallest details of economy.

The "welfare state" in the West is inching towards becoming the "minimal state". This is one of the fundamental reasons for the explosion of specialization as well as competition in western economies. As specialization and competition have progressed hand in hand, so has the need for managers with the most up-to date skills and insight into their respective fields.

Managers, today, are required to possess cutting edge knowledge, and have to keep themselves abreast of the latest and the most effective ways and means to execute projects and tasks, accomplish objectives and make their organizations survive in an environment that is increasingly becoming globalized and is marked by cut-throat competition.

All these have contributed to the enrichment and perfection of the science and art of management in the West. In the East too, countries such as Japan, China, India and Singapore have been at the forefront of developing a new generation of global managers who can handle the challenges of today's global economy while contributing to national progress and well-being of these countries.

In Afghanistan, unfortunately, management, as both a science and an art, is yet to find its true place. In the public sector, efforts to develop a new generation of managers are nascent. In diverse fields such as public finance, banking, telecommunication, services, manufacturing and so forth, a new generation of young managers equipped with modern knowledge and experience is desperately needed.

Afghanistan lacks as many banking professionals as it lacks finance managers in manufacturing and services sectors. What is evidently missing is establishment of professional management schools and institutes where the best and the brightest among young Afghans can learn cutting-edge knowledge and skills in various fields.

In Afghanistan's sprawling public sector, management, in a modern sense of it that emphasizes effectiveness and efficiency, is largely absent. The managerial style long in practice in Afghanistan has been autocratic. More than effectiveness or efficiency, what has been carrying weight with managers, administrators, and decision-makers has been the informal power that they carry rather than the authority that they derive from the position that they hold.

What we see here is that mismanagement and lack of management are rife and routine. The greatest examples of this rampant culture can be found on the debacle of two previous elections. The presidential elections in 2009 and the parliamentary elections of 2010 were the two occasions in which management of Afghan style was on display.

The results were two debacles whose negative repercussions still plague the lives of Afghans and ail the political system of the country. This rampant culture of mismanagement is also evident in the fact that over the past ten years, not even one single grand construction or development project has been executed by the government of Afghanistan.

The government and the managers and administrators in the country's public sector simply lack the skills, know-how and the vision of accomplishing anything significant. Monotony and an unfortunate culture of 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. permeate the length and the breadth of Afghanistan's public administration system. The overall result has been the government of Afghanistan is unable to spend more than 60% of its development budget year in year out.

What is desperately needed is a purge of the system. Meritocracy and hiring on the basis of merit should be the norm rather than the exception and this should be promoted throughout this vast bureaucracy. The government of Afghanistan has the moral, ethical and professional and responsibility to take proactive measures in order to radically improve the country's pathetic administrative and managerial track record.

Professional schools need to be established and a young, ambitious and dedicated new generation of managers should trained for Afghanistan's civil service. This service should draw its cadres from the best and the brightest and every effort ensured that high standards of merit and professionalism are maintained in the country's civil service.

The need of the hour in Afghanistan is to instill a sense of management and leadership into the rotten and corrupt labyrinth of Afghan bureaucracy. In a public administration system where even senior managers in the rank of deputy minister are ignorant of even the most basic of managerial wisdom, the stinking rot of corruption and a cesspool of mismanagement and incompetence spread far and wide as it has already happened.

If it was not for the foreigners and the multitude of foreign organizations that are active in in this country, Afghanistan, its public administration system and its so-called administrators would have done nothing but to loot and steal. If there has been a measure of improvement in the conditions in Afghanistan, it is thanks to the imported wisdom.

Here you find no such thing. The government of Afghanistan had better put its act together and clean itself up before it gets too late. More than a decade after the international community's arrival in Afghanistan, the country still lacks the ability to manage and execute the complex projects and operations that are expected of any public administration system.

This needs to be changed – the sooner the better. The first step would be to ensure the prevalence of a system that values and prioritizes meritocracy rather than monotony and inaction. The purge of the system needs to be undertaken and the efforts made to instill a culture into Afghanistan's public administration system that is result-oriented and values efficiency and service.

The author is the permanent writer of the Daily Outlook Afghanistan. He can be reached at outlook afghanistan@gmail.com

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