Young, talented civil servants can be promoted without planning.

In the process of soliciting comments on the Law on Cadres and Civil Servants (amended), the Ministry of Home Affairs has consulted the practices of many countries around the world and made some suggestions for upgrading civil servant ranks and promoting professional titles in Vietnam.

Countries implement promotions based on work results, achievements and decentralization to agency heads based on performance evaluation.

The Ministry of Home Affairs said that in Vietnam today, the organization of exams for promotion has some shortcomings.

Firstly, the exam does not really assess the candidate's ability. The general knowledge subject is still heavy on memorization and does not reflect the understanding and ability of civil servants.

Second, there is a phenomenon of civil servants studying ethnic minority language certificates to be exempted from foreign language exams, however, the job position does not require the use of foreign languages or ethnic minority languages.

Third, the competition and failure rate in the promotion exam is very low. At the same time, organizing the promotion exam is costly because it requires completing all kinds of certificates in IT, foreign languages, ethnic languages, training according to the rank, time and effort, which can easily lead to negativity.

In addition, civil servants taking the exam for promotion mainly aim at increasing their salary, without paying attention to meeting the job requirements of a higher rank.

The Ministry of Home Affairs believes that considering promotion based on "excellent achievements in public service during the current civil servant position, recognized by competent authorities" is not in accordance with regulations related to the rotation of cadres and civil servants holding leadership and management positions and the transfer of job positions.

The rotation, job position conversion, and transfer of civil servants affect the conversion of civil servant ranks (from specialist to inspector, enforcement officer, investigator, etc.) while the achievements achieved during the time holding the rank before the conversion, although still of equivalent value, are not the civil servant ranks currently held...

Therefore, the Ministry of Home Affairs believes that it is possible to consider eliminating the promotion exam and replacing it with considering civil servant promotion based on working ability and achievements in the old rank.

Currently, only China, France and New Zealand implement civil servant promotions. Other countries implement promotions that reflect the career development path of civil servants.

New Zealand only applies professional title promotion for lecturers to senior lecturers, associate professors and professors, decentralizing to educational institutions to establish their own review boards based on standards, norms and staff quota ratios.

In Vietnam, there is still a situation where civil servants go to school to improve their professional qualifications and complete certificates according to professional title standards. The promotion of civil servants mainly solves the problem of salary increase, not reflecting the nature of the promotion.

For example, in general schools, there is no difference in the teaching quality of third-class and second-class teachers, in the medical field; third-class and second-class doctors also have no difference in working capacity.

Therefore, the Ministry of Home Affairs proposed that Vietnam should consider increasing salaries for civil servants and eliminating the mechanism for considering promotion of professional titles.

Except for China, countries use merit-based promotion, performance appraisal, and generally do not practice planning.

Instead, they implement a fairly simple promotion process based on decentralization to the agency head who has the authority to propose or decide on appointments.

For a vacant leadership position, the human resources department will prepare a list of potential civil servants in order of achievements and abilities to propose to the head for consideration and appointment.

The Ministry of Home Affairs believes that this is an experience that Vietnam can consider in order to innovate the process of appointing officials. This will attract, promote and reward talents, improve the quality of the team of civil servants in leadership and management, and simplify the appointment process for leaders at the department, agency and division levels.

Because currently, young civil servants are talented but lack the standards for civil service positions such as senior specialists (a senior specialist must have 9 years of work experience), and the planning standards require that they must be party members and must be planned. Dynamic and talented civil servants are also prone to conflicts and encounter difficulties when getting a vote of confidence...

According to the latest draft of the Law on Cadres and Civil Servants (amended), from Article 42 to Article 46, the Ministry of Home Affairs completely removes regulations on civil servant ranks to conform to the model of civil servant management according to job positions.

Instead, the draft includes new content "arranging civil servants according to job positions".

The system of civil servant job positions is ranked according to the standards of positions, titles, job descriptions and organizational structures of agencies, organizations and units, in the system of Party, State, Vietnam Fatherland Front and socio-political organizations at the central, provincial and communal levels.

Accordingly, the change of a civil servant's job position to a new job position at a higher rank must be done through an exam or review, decided by the civil servant management agency. The change of a civil servant's job position to a new job position of equivalent rank or at a lower rank is decided by the civil servant management agency, or the agency employing the civil servant according to decentralization.