A Review of Highway Agencies in the South Asia Region

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A Review of Highway Agencies in the South Asia Region engineering skills to do so effectively. However, to be able to manage private contractors, highway agencies will need to retain a repository of technical knowledge. A number of respondents recognized the need for a broader set of competencies within the highway agencies by mentioning the requirement for IT professionals as well as managers. However, the majority is focusing on maintaining and improving certain engineering capabilities. Career Development of Personnel Maintaining good organizational memory, essentially for streamlined functioning of an organization, requires retention of staff over time. Staff retention is going to become increasingly difficult for highway agencies as their staff has new employment opportunities that previously did not exist in the private sector. Also competition for new staff is going to become increasingly fierce, as highway agencies compete with the private sector for the same set of skills and people. Highways agencies must enhance their attractiveness as employers to successfully retain current staff and attract talented new professionals. One example of this is the potential for talented individuals to develop their careers, skills and competencies within the highway agencies. Thus, highway agencies will need to seriously rethink their current human resource management policies, including training of their staff, which is currently based on seniority and tenure rather than merit. The in-depth interviews for this study suggest that, besides civil engineering skills, the highway agencies will require the following additional competencies in the next five years: Asset managers; Road safety experts; Geographic information system (GIS) /remote sensing and other IT experts; Planners; Finance specialists; and Project management specialists. 2.8.3 Performance Challenges Improving Governance and Transparency With large spending on the road network and an increasing demand for taxpayers’ value for money, the need to improve governance and transparency will become stronger. Transparency will facilitate achievement of better results by highway agencies and enable them to keep the public informed on the use of taxpayers’ money. It will also enable an outsider, be it a user, consultant or service provider, to understand the functioning of the agency, its use of public funds or support required by the agency to achieve its objectives. The need to improve governance also addresses the same issue. There is a need to better control the agency, the network it manages and the inputs it uses, as the public and specific stakeholders become more demanding. Meeting Increasing Expectation of Road Users With growing incomes and awareness, road users are becoming more demanding: they demand quality services and infrastructure, and expect to easily and clearly understand how their tax money is being spent. Thus, roads will need to comply with higher quality standards, congestion will need to be reduced, and road safety concerns will become more apparent. Highway agencies, carrying the responsibility for the operation and management of the road network, will need to face these demands. Various policy documents recognize the need to commit sufficient resources to maintenance so as to deliver quality infrastructure. Examples are the Perspective Plan 2010- 21 of the Bangladesh Planning Commission and the Approach Paper for the 12th Five Year Plan of the Planning Commission of India. 48
A Review of Highway Agencies in the South Asia Region Cultural Change Required Currently, as explained before, highway agencies have a strong ‘engineering’ and ‘input’ focus. They need to pay additional attention to the concerns of users, transparency, value for money and the quality of output and outcome. Highway agencies need to shift their focus from an engineering provision of asset-only to a more service oriented, user-friendly, accountable, and custodian-of-public-assets focus. 49
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Transport Division Transport, Water
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A Review of Highway Agencies in the South Asia Region

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