Modernization of the civil service system towards professionalism, responsibility, dynamism, and practical skills

Assoc.Prof., Dr. NGUYEN MINH PHUONG
Dr. TRAN THI LAN ANH
The National Academy of Public Administration

1. Question to be raised

Depending on the different political institutions and historical and cultural traditions of each country, the concepts of civil service, civil servants, and civil service system may vary. However, it can be understood that a country’s civil service system is an organic, interconnected whole, with the following parts: i) Civil service institutions; 2) Contingent of civil servants; 3) Conditions to ensure public service activities of civil servants and 4) organizations and individuals who are the subjects served by the civil service system.

The goal of modernizing the civil service system is to improve the quality and operational efficiency of agencies and organizations in the political system, to better serve the people and businesses, thereby promoting socio-economic development, improving the quality of life for the people, and increasing the happiness index of the Vietnamese people.

Modernizing the civil service system is a process of adapting, modifying, and supplementing to synchronously and simultaneously perfect the components that make up the civil service system. However, due to the cognitive capacity of the subjects, the conditions, and practical requirements of the civil service system at certain stages, it is possible to prioritize the resolution of urgent problems.

2. Some solutions to modernize the civil service system

Firstly, perfecting the public service institution in a complete, synchronous, unified, and transparent manner

Thoroughly grasping the Party’s requirements to “Improve institutions and regulations on cadre work, title standards, criteria, and evaluation mechanisms for cadres”(1) and “establish mechanisms for selecting, training, recruiting, attracting and utilizing talented people, encouraging and protecting officials who dare to think, dare to do, dare to make breakthroughs, dare to take responsibility, dare to renovate, dare to cope with difficulties and challenges and be decisive in their actions for the common benefit”(2), it is necessary to perform a number of tasks:

Research, amend, supplement, or promulgate new legal documents on the management of cadres, civil servants, and public employees to ensure synchronization with the Party’s regulations on cadre work, creating unity in the political system and building a mechanism to connect civil servants at the commune level with the district and provincial levels. Initially, focus on researching, amending, and supplementing regulations on job position determination, recruitment, utilization, evaluation, and discipline of commune-level officials and civil servants.

Amend and supplement regulations on the rights and obligations of civil servants, making them more specific and reasonable, in order to regulate the behavior of each group in public service. Accordingly, more clearly distinguish elected officials from recruited civil servants, distinguish civil servants in party agencies, Fatherland Front agencies, and people’s organizations from civil servants in executive agencies and civil servants of judiciary agencies, thereby stipulating specific conditions and standards regarding age, level of credit, rights, obligations as well as appropriate management institutions for each target group. At the same time, ensure conditions for groups of civil servants to exercise their rights and obligations, including facilities, working environment, etc., especially the right to get paid salaries commensurate with labor efforts as civil servants.

Improve regulations and instructions on position standards and methods for determining professional positions that are suitable for each type of agency, organization, and locality; clearly and reasonably assign and decentralize authority for approving lists of professional positions. At the same time, strengthen state management of professional positions and the system of titles and standards for civil servants and officials.

Develop and supplement legal documents on positions and professional standards of civil servants, including: regulations on standards of civil servant leadership and management at all levels; standards for civil servant ranks and professional titles of civil servants; standards for officials at commune levels.

Ministries managing sectors and fields shall review, amend, and supplement regulations on standards for specialized civil servant ranks and professional title standards for specialized public employees as the basis for recruitment and promotion, upgrading, evaluation, training, fostering, and appointing in accordance with regulations. Formulate more reasonable regulations on the number of commune-level civil servants based on area, population, management requirements and specific characteristics of urban, rural, island, mountainous, and remote areas; Minimize the number of part-time workers at the commune level, linking the responsibilities of commune-level civil servants to specific jobs.

Research and promulgate documents to organize the implementation of the National Strategy for talent attraction and utilization until 2030, with a vision to 2050 (under Decision No. 899/QD-TTg dated July 31, 2023, by the Prime Minister) to create a basis for ministries, branches and localities to apply and deploy synchronously and consistently according to their actual conditions. Strategy implementation documents need to clearly define goals, solutions, and stages of implementation; clearly define the responsibilities of organizations and individuals in effectively building and implementing policies for talent attraction, utilization, and remuneration. To attract talented people, it is necessary to closely combine respect, recognition, and remuneration of talents; understanding, and trusting talented people, protecting talented people; Knowing how to promote and encourage talented people. Therefore, along with discovering and attracting talented people, appropriately utilizing and appreciating talents so as not to “waste” talent is crucial.

Improving the evaluation regime for public servants and employees linked to work results and efficiency, and emphasizing the responsibility of leaders, suitable to the characteristics and nature of activities of each group of public employees. Amend and supplement regulations on criteria for evaluating and classifying quality based on quantification, ensuring objectivity, fairness, based on the results of quarterly or annual quality rankings of civil servants to implement the regime of bonuses (according to the new salary policy), at the same time, there may be grounds to remove from the contingent those who do not complete their tasks, addressing the issue of “lifelong payroll”.

Research and promulgate a mechanism for people and organizations to participate in the evaluation of cadres and civil servants, contributing to raising the sense of responsibility of the cadres and civil servants, and at the same time democratizing cadre work in line with the Party’s policies, ensuring regulations on obligations in general and obligations related to public service ethics and professional ethics in particular (be devoted to serve the people, respect for the people, close contact with the people, etc.) with the inspection, supervision and evaluation by the people. Institutionalize the Party’s regulations on power control in personnel work.

Organize and implement regulations on encouraging and protecting officials who are dynamic, creative, dare to think, dare to do, and dare to take responsibility for the common benefit (Decree No. 73/2023/ND-CP dated September 29 -2023).

Research and develop a Code of Public Service Ethics, which clearly defines the core values of the Vietnamese civil service and specifies what public servants must do; things that are not allowed and things that should not be done; cases where it is necessary to voluntarily and proactively resign or quit their positions. Regulating and publicizing basic ethical principles and standards, guiding the behavior of public employees. At the same time, continue to improve socio-economic management institutions so that civil servants have conditions to implement public service ethics and professional ethics; promoting the people’s supervisory role in compliance with public service ethics and professional ethics standards of civil servants.

Renewing the understanding and perspective on salary policy reform for public employees to perfect legal regulations on salaries, bonuses, and incentives associated with job titles and positions. Clearly identify priorities and ensure resources for civil servant salary reform; Build up an appropriate roadmap and determine reform priorities. Renovate the salary management method for civil servants, distinguishing between public agencies from public service organizations to create suitable financial and salary management mechanisms.

Design a comprehensive salary allowance system. Systematize and review existing allowances to clearly determine the which to retain, replace, or supplement. Supplement the bonus fund at about 10% of the year’s total salary fund and develop a bonus regime for employees who successfully complete their tasks, including salary increases ahead of schedule and bonuses for outstanding performance.

To improve the quality of mechanisms and policies on civil servants and public employees, the development and amendment of policies and laws should clearly define viewpoints and goals when promulgating policies; objectively and comprehensively evaluate the economic and social impacts and feasibility of policies to be promulgated; clearly define the rights and obligations of the leading and the coordinating agencies in developing policies for public employees.

Secondly, building a contingent of cadres, civil servants, and public employees with a reasonable structure that meets the standards of professional titles, positions, and competency frameworks.

Improve the quality of civil servant evaluating and public employee examinations for in an open, transparent, and objective manner, ensuring the attraction of people with good qualities and abilities into public services. Renovate the content and methods of the entrance exams to focus on testing and evaluating thinking capacity and the ability to apply knowledge into practice instead of testing knowledge only; focus on assessing the candidate’s personality, attitude, planning capacity, and performance through discussing policies and plans.

Streamline the contingent of civil servants and public employees in conjunction with restructuring the organizational apparatus, rearranging the system of public service units, and reforming the salary regime. Complete regulations on administrative funding to streamline staffing; promote the implementation of autonomy and self-responsibility mechanisms in public service units and socialize public services, gradually reducing the expenditure of public employee salary from the state budget.

Continue to renovate the content and form of competitive rank promotion examinations and rank promotion evaluations in a way that is linked to the professional requirements and competency framework of each civil service grade and public service to ensure the selection of the right individuals with sufficient capacity, qualities, and skills to meet and accomplish job requirements.

Renovate the method for selecting leaders at the department, board, and division levels, ensuring the Party’s leadership over personnel work, and in accordance with the actual conditions of each level, each sector, and locality in order to select the right people with talent, qualifications, qualities and capacity for each leadership and management position; implement regulations for leadership and management internship system.

Renovate the content, criteria, methods, and process of evaluating public employees, ensuring objectivity, democracy, fairness, openness, and transparency, focusing on criteria related to effectiveness in task performance results and satisfaction of the people and businesses. Apply management and evaluation mechanisms for public employees according to professional position and output results. Based on the assessment results, we can effectively streamline staffing and restructuring the staff to improve quality, rather than simply reducing uniformly the number of staff members and cadres.

Strengthen the training and fostering of civil servants while renovating content, programs, and training methods towards updating and modernizing, focusing on improving skills and capacity to perform public duties, and educating moral qualities for civil servants. On the basis of correctly understanding that the goal of training and fostering civil servants is to supplement and update knowledge, form a system of skills and attitudes necessary for performing assigned tasks, not to be confused with the term “training” belonging to the national education system, focusing on institutionalizing the training regime according to professional position; Institutionalize training according to rank standards, positions, leadership and management roles with requirements of professional position and digital transformation; Build a mechanism to encourage self-study, self-training and fostering of each civil servant.

Improve the capacity of lecturers, focus on building and fostering a contingent of visiting lecturers in training establishments to fostering civil servants. Consolidate the system of training and development institutions, focusing on the quality of training and fostering activities. Create a competitive mechanism in training and fostering civil servants by attracting universities, research institutes, and capable businesses to participate in training and development.

Strengthening regulation and administrative discipline with the goal of improving ethics, public service culture, and professional ethics of civil servants and public employees. Implement a synchronous system of solutions, including completing the legal framework to strengthen administrative discipline, creating conditions for ethical values to develop, preventing and limiting ethical degradation; Promote education, promote ethical values, public service culture, and the social responsibility of civil servants. Renovate and strengthen the education of ethics, public service culture, and professional ethics to form ethical standards, a public service culture for public servants, and professional ethics for public employees; Continue to promote studying and following Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, ethics, and style.

Clearly define the responsibilities of organizations and individuals in managing civil servants. Strengthen the responsibility and handling of responsibilities of the heads of agencies, organizations, and units in the management of civil servants. Develop a plan to guide the rotation of public servants in accordance with directing the implementation of approved plans for public servants. Carry out the rotation by properly resolving the relationship between rotation with stability, and building a contingent of highly-specialized cadres and civil servants; emphasize meeting work requirements and tasks while ensuring the purpose of fostering, training, and preparing the next contingent.

Thirdly, improve the capacity to apply information technology and digital transformation capabilities of officials, civil servants, and public employees; Promote the application of information technology in the management of officials and civil servants

Industrial Revolution No. 4 has had a profound impact on all areas of social life, including the public service activities of civil servants. Applying information technology to public service activities with the goal of developing e-government and digital government is an inevitable trend and has quickly become a key focus of the Party and the State of Vietnam.

The Politburo’s Resolution No. 36-NQ/TW dated July 1, 2014, on promoting the application and development of information technology to meet the requirements of sustainable development and international integration clearly emphasizes: “Prioritizing the application of information technology in administrative management and public service provision, especially in fields related to businesses and the people such as education and training, healthcare, transport, agriculture, etc...”.

The Government’s comprehensive state administrative reform program for the period 2021 - 2030 has set the goal of “Increasing the application of information technology, digital transformation, and the application of scientific and technological advances to promote the completion of building and developing e-government and digital government, contributing to renovating working methods, improving productivity and the operational efficiency of state administrative agencies at all levels with sufficient capacity to operate the digital economy and digital society to meet the requirements of socio-economic development, national defense, security and international integration; Improve the quality of public service provision for people and organizations”. To achieve the above goal, there is a need to focus on performing the following tasks:

Along with urgently perfecting the legal environment, upgrading facilities and equipment to meet modernization requirements in implementing e-government, digital government, and developing information technology infrastructure and shared platforms on a national scale, it is necessary to focus on developing high-quality human resources, attracting information technology experts to serve the management, operation, and exploitation of invested information systems, especially in human resources to manage the data integration and network management centers of ministries, branches, and localities. Prioritize investing resources in mountainous localities, and economically disadvantaged localities.

Build a digital competency framework for groups of civil servants, thereby implementing training and fostering programs on digital knowledge, skills, and attitudes towards digital transformation for civil servants and employees, creating a readiness for digital transformation to develop working capabilities in digital environment, meeting the requirements of public service activities and providing online public services. At the same time, establish a community digital technology network, supporting the implementation of digital transformation down to the grassroots, ward, commune and town levels, with the core being a specialized information technology unit, and the participation of businesses and socio-political organizations, to guide people in digital knowledge and skills so they can use online public services.

Promote the application of information technology in the management of civil servants, including: synthesizing and updating the database system on civil servants; supporting recruitment activities, promotion exams, evaluation, appointments, promotions, competition, commendation, and reward work to ensure objectivity, transparency, and openness in civil servants management. At the same time, apply information technology to create proper conditions to complete the list of professional positions, officer titles, civil servant rank structure, contributing to reducing time and human resources focused purely on the administrative work of agencies and units, laying the foundation for effective staff streamlining, starting with and directly affecting civil servants who are in charge of staff organization and administrative work in the agencies and units.

Fourthly, ensure the conditions for modernizing the civil service system

Recognizing the necessity and importance of modernizing the civil service system, creating conditions for reform initiatives, and modernizing the civil service to meet the requirements of good governance in the country. In the new context, perfecting public service institutions, improving the quality and capacity of civil servants to perform tasks, applying information technology and digital transformation are considered decisive factors in building a professional, responsible, dynamic, transparent, and efficient public service for the people, serving the people, and contributing significantly to enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of state management, preventing corruption, and ensuring the success of the country’s renovation efforts.

Recognizing the need to modernize a professional, dynamic, and competent civil service is a regular and continuous task for the entire political system and the society; creating a strong shift in perception at all levels of leadership from central to grassroots, and among the people about the necessity and benefits of digital transformation. Thereby, fostering trust and positive support for modernizing civil service, adapting to the accelerated development of modern, advanced digital technology.

Continuing to build and perfect the state administrative institutional system towards clearly defining the functions and tasks of each agency, organization, and the responsibilities of each civil servant or public employee. Implement the principle of assigning only one leading agency responsible, while related agencies coordinating in implementation. Promote scientific and rational assignment and decentralization, coupled with increased responsibility and promotion of the proactive, creative, and self-responsible role of each locality and ministry. Thoroughly address the situation of overlapping functions, tasks, and powers; clearly define responsibilities between individuals and collectives, promote individual roles and responsibilities, especially the heads of state administrative agencies. Create a uniform legal basis to ensure the people’s right to direct supervision of the activities of civil servants; Implement openness, transparency, and accountability in socio-economic management activities.

3. Conclusion

Modernization is the process of political, economic, cultural, and social reform of the country or the organizational structure, personnel, and operating methods of an organization to match scientific advances, technology, particularly Industrial Revolution 4.0, and new human values to meet the requirements of the new context. Accordingly, modernizing the civil service system in our country is the process of reforming and upgrading the country’s civil service system through perfecting the public service institutional system; building a contingent of civil servants with sufficient qualities, capacity, and prestige to serve the people; applying information technology and digital transformation to change operating content and methods, meet new challenges, and create motivation for modern and effective national governance.

Strengthening research and learn from experiences in modernizing the civil service systems in countries with advanced civil services, especially of the job-position-based public service model, initially building a scientifically proper job position list to streamline staffing, simplify the organizational structure, and reform salary policies, contributing to enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of public service activities.

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Received: December 27, 2023; Revised: January 3, 2024; Approved for publication: January 20, 2024.

Endnotes:

(1), (2) CPV: Documents of the 13th National Party Congress, vol.I, National Political Publishing House, Hanoi, 2021, pp.187, 179.