Better-Trained Officials, Less Tricked Citizens
When we talk about weber’s characteristics of bureaucracy, we assume these are the ideal one as they reveal a condition of balance in both public and private affairs within a modern state. And one of the characteristics weber expressed was the thorough and expert training of officials. All employees must be selected by technical skills and competence from upper strata. They will be appointed by superior authority or elected by the governed. Tenure is presupposed. But their salary will not be based on the work done. Rather it will be on rank (function) or their service length. Also, the office holding is a vocation and this will be one of the requirements while training.
F W Taylor also focused on scientific selection and the progressive development of the workmen in his “Scientific Management”. He focused on training a workman based on his limitation and more importantly giving him opportunities for advancement. Taylor mentioned four types of studies for this selection. It takes time but scientific selection can ensure the highest utilization and profitable work from a workman according to his natural abilities. Besides, scientific management creates harmony between management’s side and workman’s side and gives a very little place for discord.
The importance of training was also mentioned in Luther Gullick’s POSDCORB. Here the “S” stands for Staffing, which means bringing in and training the staff. Although Herbert Simon said the more we specialize, it is harder to maintain the unity. Also, specialization makes workman arrogant and weirdly, the know-it-all. So the training should consider all these circumstances.
Keeping the importance of training in mind, Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre or BPATC has taken many projects, courses. BPATC is dedicated to providing effective, inclusive training for civil servants and accountable administrative system. There are training courses based on ranks and to build capacity by upgrading the skills. According to, Annual Performance Agreement 2018–19, in three years 472 employees are given the training to start e-filing. And the probably estimated percentage of cadres to be trained in these years about law and administration is 40%. The score of this in the category of excellent is 40 and the projection is 47. If a cadre gets a promotion, the score in the category of excellent will be 50 in all the types of program and the last target will be 55. The total targeted point is 40 in administrator capacity building and these two types of activities that I have mentioned have the weight of performance indicators 2 each. This is based on the performance of the Ministry of Public Administration. And according to, BPATC the strategic objective of capacity building of employees, the targeted point is 55. Also, the outcome of the training to upgrade skills was 3852 in 2017–18 and the target is 4000 in 2018–19. And the last target is 4500 in 2020–21.
The ongoing projects for training are Enhancement of Training Capacity of BPATC, Vertical Extension of International Training Complex of BPATC, and Capacity Enhancement of the Core Courses of BPATC Project. The objectives of these projects are to provide quality training, improving the infrastructure of the center of training and enhance the capacity of BPATC for international standard training. There are some perspective projects as well. On another note, BPATC conducts special foundation training course, policy planning, and management course. The evaluation of all these training courses has a detailed process. There will be written or unwritten exams presentation and other ways. There are some models to evaluate. And the training is divided into different terms among staffs. And to monitor the training courses there are course management, evaluation team, and the vigilance team. BPATC provides their training services in regional level as well.
Although BPATC has large goals and they are working well but still there are some questions left. Like if the service takers or the employees are actually taking their training sincerely or not, if they are implementing their education in reality, showing integrity after the training or whether they can actually have a free opinion when needed or not. In fact, the evaluation system might not be correct always.
Now I think to have an ideal and corruption-free administration, we need to have a strong training program. Because we need to have an authority who knows why and how to utilize the power for the citizen’s betterment rather having an authority who is unworthy, indifferent and does not know what to do. As well as we need an educated administration, serving the people also. More importantly, we, the general people, who do not have any option to bribe besides going with the slow process , on a daily basis face problems of coordination, management, partiality in street-level officials. Which raises the question of the accuracy of the existing training system. But if there is proper training they will know and then this problem can be eradicated. Well, at least, we can stop the problems at ground level first. So no doubt, we must give priorities over this matter.
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