ISLAMABAD: The Shehbaz Sharif government is once again attempting what successive governments have repeatedly promised but failed to achieve over decades — a fundamental overhaul of the country’s bureaucracy.
The Shehbaz Sharif government, through a high-powered Civil Service Reforms Committee headed by Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal, has prepared what officials describe as the most comprehensive blueprint for restructuring the civil service since the recommendations of economist Dr Ishrat Husain during the PTI government. Yet most of the suggested reforms, already finalised and even approved in principle by the cabinet, are still far from implementation.
Official sources said that between 30 and 38 commissions and committees have been constituted so far in Pakistan to modernise the civil service. Almost every government has diagnosed the bureaucracy’s structural weaknesses and proposed remedies. However, most of these reports were either shelved, diluted or only partially implemented, leaving intact a system that critics say continues to reflect its colonial origins rather than the needs of a modern democratic state.
“Pakistan’s real problem has never been a shortage of reform proposals. Rather, it has been the bureaucracy’s institutional resistance to change, coupled with inconsistent political commitment and frequent changes of government,” said a source.
From the Justice Munir Commission (1948) to the Administrative Reorganisation Committee (1958), the Cornelius Commissions (1959 and 1969), the Administrative Reforms Committee (1973), the National Commission for Government Reforms (2008) and Dr Ishrat Husain’s reform package during the PTI government, successive exercises identified remarkably similar shortcomings and recommended broadly similar solutions. Yet the bureaucracy’s recruitment structure, promotion system, occupational groups and concentration of administrative authority remain largely unchanged.
Repeated reform proposals have sought to replace seniority-based promotions with performance evaluation, introduce specialists into government, restructure elite occupational groups, modernise recruitment, decentralise administrative authority and reform the decades-old Annual Confidential Report (ACR) system. Almost every one of these recommendations has resurfaced repeatedly over the past several decades, yet implementation has remained elusive.
The reform package prepared under Dr Ishrat Husain, initially during Musharraf government and then during PTI regime, proposed creating a National Executive Service, reducing overlapping cadres, introducing performance-based promotions, increasing specialisation and restructuring ministries. Despite receiving cabinet-level attention, implementation stalled amid bureaucratic resistance, legal complications and changing political priorities.
A similar fate befell the civil service reform strategy launched during the previous PMLN government under Ahsan Iqbal in 2015. That initiative envisioned replacing Pakistan’s colonial administrative structure with a modern, professional and performance-oriented civil service through specialised recruitment, performance-based promotions, fixed tenures, improved salaries, digitisation and modern human resource management. Political developments, however, interrupted the process before meaningful implementation could begin.
Now, nearly a decade later, Ahsan Iqbal has returned to the same challenge. Recognising that repeated reform attempts had failed, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif constituted a high-level Civil Service Reforms Committee under Ahsan Iqbal to prepare another comprehensive roadmap for transforming Pakistan’s bureaucracy.
The committee has held many meetings, examining recruitment, promotions, remuneration, training, institutional restructuring and performance evaluation. Officials describe the exercise as one of the most exhaustive reviews of Pakistan’s civil service undertaken in recent years. The committee has proposed replacing the traditional generalist model with a specialist-based civil service, arguing that governance today requires experts in economics, engineering, finance, health, technology, climate change and public policy instead of administrators expected to manage every sector regardless of professional background.
Among its key recommendations are restructuring occupational groups into broader professional clusters, introducing specialised recruitment, replacing seniority-based promotions with Key Performance Indicator (KPI)-driven evaluations, reforming the CSS examination, replacing the existing ACR system, strengthening continuous professional training and creating what Ahsan Iqbal calls a “Smart Civil Service” driven by technology, merit and measurable performance.
Addressing the reform committee, Ahsan Iqbal argued that the civil service structure designed in 1973 could no longer meet the governance requirements of the twenty-first century. He has consistently maintained that Pakistan cannot aspire to become a competitive economy while relying on an administrative system designed for colonial governance rather than citizen-centric public service.
Ironically, many of the committee’s recommendations closely resemble those proposed by Dr Ishrat Husain and earlier reform commissions, underscoring the remarkable consistency in expert opinion over the years. The challenge has never been identifying what needs to change; it has been implementing those changes.
Officials warn that the latest reform initiative now faces the same test that defeated many of its predecessors. Several proposals including specialised recruitment, restructuring occupational groups and overhauling the CSS framework have reportedly generated reservations within sections of the bureaucracy. It is argued that unless the political leadership demonstrates sustained commitment and resists institutional pressure, the latest blueprint may ultimately join the long list of well-drafted reform reports that never moved beyond official files.
For Pakistan, the sources insist, the issue is no longer about producing another reform document. The real test is whether the present government can, for the first time, overcome bureaucratic hurdles and translate decades of consensus into meaningful institutional change.
