by Innovative Development Strategies (IDS), Islamabad
Introduction
This report seeks to delineate a user needs profile of executive education on governance in Pakistan for a variety of stakeholders including legislatures, public institutes, local governments, think tanks, NGOs, associations, clubs, chambers, and unions, while co-relating it with the current state of executive education courses/programs being run in public and private sector institutions of Pakistan.
The exercise forms part of a larger project currently being implemented by the Governance Institute Network International (GINI) with the assistance of Government of Norway and in partnership with the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research (NIBR), Oslo. GINI program on governance education network aims at developing a national integrated network of learning and research institutions to systematically approach the furtherance of governance knowledge. The objective of the program is to create governance capacity in various spheres of governance covering universities, institutions, practitioners, researchers, NGOs, think tanks and the student body of Pakistan which elects to take up governance courses.
Scope of work
Introduction
This report seeks to delineate a user needs profile of executive education on governance in Pakistan for a variety of stakeholders including legislatures, public institutes, local governments, think tanks, NGOs, associations, clubs, chambers, and unions, while co-relating it with the current state of executive education courses/programs being run in public and private sector institutions of Pakistan.
The exercise forms part of a larger project currently being implemented by the Governance Institute Network International (GINI) with the assistance of Government of Norway and in partnership with the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research (NIBR), Oslo. GINI program on governance education network aims at developing a national integrated network of learning and research institutions to systematically approach the furtherance of governance knowledge. The objective of the program is to create governance capacity in various spheres of governance covering universities, institutions, practitioners, researchers, NGOs, think tanks and the student body of Pakistan which elects to take up governance courses.
Scope of work
Under the project, Innovative Development Strategies (IDS) has been tasked with the preparation of a comprehensive user needs profile of executive education on governance in Pakistan. The profile will be based on the requirements of key stakeholders including legislatures, local governments, government institutes, think tanks, NGOs, associations, clubs, chambers, and unions. While it is important to focus on some of the key elements of good governance (accountability, participation, predictability and transparency) at all levels, it is also crucial to relate these to existing government structures, constraints and challenges. The needs assessment would, therefore, elicit requirements of the above key stakeholders within the context of existing constraints and challenges, while suggesting ways of moving towards achieving the cited elements through executive education on good governance.
Methodology
Methodology
The report sought to develop a comprehensive user needs profile of executive education on governance in Pakistan with the help of the following tools:
A Desk Review of executive education on governance in Pakistan involving a thorough literature review focusing on major themes of executive education in the country. The review helped in identifying key target areas as well as laying the basic framework for the development of a draft questionnaire to be administered to key informants.
In-depth Interviews with educationists, academics, public servants, etc. on the challenges, opportunities and needs relevant to governance with particular reference to executive education.
Focus Group Discussions (FGDs): Expert inputs on defining problems, assessing needs and proposing recommendations vis-à-vis executive education on governance.
Three focus groups were organized comprising representatives of the key stakeholder sets. The composition of Focus Groups was extremely important for this study. The groups comprised of participants from a diverse set of backgrounds relevant to the objectives of the study. The FGDs included various types of bureaucrats and governance practitioners at the national, provincial and local level. These exercises were also helpful in identifying specific constraints, bottlenecks and structural problems, while proposing practical recommendations to improve the state of executive education on good governance.
Posts
Dear all,
ReplyDeleteI have read this report with great interest, and I am pleased to say that I think that the team behind the report has done a very good job.
The report provides a lot of good and relevant information and data on the status and needs of executive education on governance in Pakistan.
In particular, I found chapters IV and V very stimulating and interesting. These parts provide a lot of information about the background and development of executive education on governance in Pakistan, which was new - at least to me. These chapters also provide very useful data, findings and recommendations for the follow-up work. These parts were also well written and easy to read.
I have some more specific comments:
Page 5. In the discussion of what constitutes Good governance.
I wonder if it would be useful also to relate this to the concept "government", and what constitutes the difference between government and governance?
p. 7. Bullet points under Economic Principles:
Would add: The need for peace and stability to attract people's willingess to invest and settle down.
p. 8. Very useful reference to DFID report, which contain a lot of important and useful insights on the relationship between governance and development.
p. 10. The Figure is quite illustrative and good. However, there are two boxes, which I think are of strong importance and relevance, and which are not explicitely presented and discussed in this report. These are the two boxes: "Socioeconomic conditions, cultural factors", and "Characteristics of the state agencies and other service providers". To discuss these topics have not been part of the assignment or the ToR, so it is quite natural that these elements are not included in the report. However, I think that these issues are of great importance, in order to understand the structural and organisational constraints under which governmenet officers and administrators are functioning, so this is something we should come back to in later follow up studies.
p. 11. Paragraph 3: On the respondents' diagnosis of the problems:
I wonder if the options that the respondents have had for explaining the state of goverance in Pakistan are a little too narrow? I find that all the explanations that are given are, in a sense, very individualistic. That is, they do not say much about organisational constraints, structural limitations, etc. (Cfr. the comment above). But this is something that we can return to later.
p. 11. Paragraph 4: The ranking of characteristics of good governance:
I wonder if these characteristics/answer options can be positioned along the same scale/axis? Just a question.
p. 13. Paragraph 3, Economic Factors:
What about lack of employment and income earning opportunities, and insufficeint access to - and benefits from - production results and values created in society?
p. 13. Table 2:
Just a comment: In a way, I pity the Civil servants. They get most of the blame, but will often also be functioning under very difficult structural constraints and limitations!
p. 14. The paragraph with reference to Charlton et. al. and Cheema, and the first bullet point:
I had some problems understanding this. Perhaps just my reading?
p. 14. Second bullet point.
This observation is very important, and I think that this should be further elaborated in later follow-up studies.
continued from above....
ReplyDeletepp. 16-35. As already mentioned, I found this chapter to be very interesting and good.
p. 34. This page provides a good summary of many of the challenges that governance in Pakistan is facing.
p. 44. Third paragraph, on confusion regarding functions assigned to different levels of government:
Again, I think that this is not something that should be referred to only on the basis of the individuals' understanding. This also constitutes a more general challenge, linked to differenciation of tasks and responsibilities between different sectors and levels of government, and which can be viewed as an organisational and structural challenge. This is also something that we are encountering a lot in Norway.
Conclusion/summary and recommendations.
There is not a specific chapter called Summary and recommendations, but part IV and V ( and especially pages 44 and 45) contain paragraphs that in many respects function as a summary, and which also provide some recommendations. This could be made more explicit.
In all, I enjoyed reading this report!
Best regards,
Arne
The baseline research on user needs profile of executive education on governance in Pakistan by Innovative Development Strategies (IDS), Islamabad talks about the importance of executive education in Governance and also tries to give vital, very important, important and desirable recommendations but it rather focuses on the problems of various stakeholders roles and not able to highlight how this executive education would make a difference.
ReplyDeleteAgain the recommendations start with a requirement of more training institutes.
The research does hiah1iht some of the courses that can be included in the Governance module that may give a wider view to the people who are serving in government departments/civil society organizations/media and other professional groups etc.
The making of the existing management system ethical in all the spheres of Pakistan bureaucracy is a positive recommendation along with establishing of forums where performance of departments is scrutinized.
Though these recommendations are fruitful, but they focus on improving the functioning of various departments and gives little recommendations as to how this new Executive Education program will make a direct impact.
Hiring of world class faculty and facilitating short training modules are recommendations made by other TNA researches as well.