The fourth edition of the Colombo Development Dialogues focused on ‘Public Sector Modernisation’. The panel brought together a range of individuals from the government, private sector, development agencies, and academia, to provide expert interventions on the need for modernisation within Sri Lanka’s public sector and potential ways forward. The panel was complemented by four pre-identified Discussants, who provided additional perspectives and evaluations of the panellists’ comments to facilitate further questions and discussions. As such, perspectives on the structure of the government and the cadre, bottlenecks within the public sector and potential reforms to move forward with were discussed and debated during the course of the event.