Multi-faceted Evaluation System to Be Extended to Grade 1 Civil Servants

The Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs and the Civil Service Commission issued personnel decision guidelines on March 9 ahead of the expected follow-up appointments of high-level civil servants.

The guidelines call for a multi-faceted evaluation system for high-level civil servants and transparency in personnel decisions. They also warn that those asking for special favor will be subject to disadvantages during evaluations.

General principles of civil servant appointment as set by the new government are as follows: allocate qualified personnel based on evaluation on capabilities; offer incentives to good-performers to enhance competitiveness; boost transparency by opening up standards of evaluation; and strike a balance in terms of regional bases, gender and backgrounds.

The details of the guidelines further require heads of departments to reveal who asked for favor and what they asked, as well as introduce an open recommendation system to recruit qualified human resources.

To promote consistency and predictability in personnel decisions, standards of evaluation will be open and the multi-faceted evaluation system presently applied to lower-level officials below grade 4 will be enhanced to cover high-ranking officials up to grade 1.

A set of requirements will be introduced for posts requiring professional knowledge and skills and posts widely preferred within organizations.

The government will further encourage intense competition and fair judgment through an open competition process, while promoting human-resource exchange programs between the government and the private sector, between government agencies and between the central and local governments.

In a move to foster administration experts, the government will focus more on long-term work in a given department than pushing for job transfers, while maintaining the transfer system within the same field.

Meanwhile, the guidelines require handing over personnel to a decision-making authority for transfer of manager-level officials to department head positions.

Hyun-Doo Lee ruchi@donga.com