Gov’t to axe 2 mn civil servants by 2020: The Central Authority For Organization and Administration (CAOA, the bureaucracy’s bureaucracy, if you will) sees a day when Africa’s largest employer gets a bit leaner. CAOA chief Mohamed Gameel says the authority is looking at how to show 2 mn civil servants the door by 2020, cutting the total bureaucracy to 4 mn positions.

That process begins with the introduction of an early retirement program when the executive regulations for the Civil Service Act are released, Gameel said. The authority is expecting to retire bureaucrats at a rate of 200K per year, according to Gameel. As a general policy, the government will also hold off on new hires until the regs are release, but different government bodies can continue to hire if circumstances require it. The authority also plans to institute random testing of bureaucrats for use of banned substances, Al Borsa reports. While the government has always spoken about the need to reform and downsize the civil service (one of the largest drains on the state budget), this is the first time we can recall that a government official has come out and publically declared that there is a plan in place to downsize the bureaucracy.

The government maintains a corruption index? We’re more surprised to learn that the Cabinet Information and Decision Support Center maintains a corruption index than we were to learn that said index sees the Traffic Authority and the Civil Registry Office as the nation’s most corrupt institutions, according to Al Borsa. The IDSC has referred its most recent findings to the National Coordinating Committee for Combating Corruption for a more detailed investigation into accounts of bribery, inducement, and the squandering of public funds, the newspaper says.