9. REFORM OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AND DEVELOPMENTBoth lessons of experience and EU recommendations indicate that efforts to reform public administration and prepare for EU integration would have no chance to succeed if profound reforms are not undertaken in the human resource field. Several priority goals need to be pursued: to establish a professional civil service based on the principles of a democratic state ruled by law, and meeting the criteria of high quality, efficiency, reliability and impartiality; to create professional staff capacities for territorial self-government; and to raise the prestige of being a public official by improving the services provided to the citizens and enhancing the material and moral support of public administration employees. The Constitution of the Czech Republic provides for the adoption of a Civil Service Act. The Programme Declaration of the Government of the Czech Republic as well as the Accession Partnership have included it among the priorities of the reform. However, the reform of human resources cannot be limited to the adoption of an Act. A real effect can be achieved only by simultaneously introducing modern personnel management and a new training system. 9.1 Civil Service ActThe purpose of the Civil Service Act is to create the necessary legal prerequisites for a professional, impartial, stable and efficient state administration. The Act must guarantee the needed legal and social security, which will make employment in the civil service more attractive and stimulate the improvement of its quality and efficiency. The European Union has no mandatory recommendations as regards a specific way of organizing the civil service. However, existing reports point out the requirements which will need to be met after EU accession and which must be incorporated into the reform strategy:
The completion of the Civil Service Act is still hindered by the absence of a political decision at Government level concerning
The proposals under consideration (including the latest proposal of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs submitted in Spring 1998) suggest a career system as target solution. The employees of administrative authorities exercising state administration should be subjected to strictly defined service prerequisites, duties and restrictions (such as prohibition to participate in a business or limitation of political activity), as well as to legal responsibility, which considerably exceed the requirements set in labour legislation. These restrictions, and limited salary prospects, should be compensated by certain social advantages and security, guaranteed promotion and, particularly in the future perspective, by tenure guaranteeing the civil servants that their service relationship is in principle unrecallable. The career system is in accordance with our pre-communist democratic traditions. EU studies recommend it to membership candidates because of its stabilizing effect. An alternative civil service system (the "merit system" or recently the "job system"), applied e.g. in the USA or in Scandinavian countries, is not based on public-law relationship of permanent character. This results in greater mobility and stronger application of managerial methods also in the civil service. Both systems are based exclusively on professional prerequisites for performing the jobs and staffing civil service positions (and, consequently, on obligatory competitions with fixed criteria and procedural rules) and regulate the status of public officials by an Act guaranteeing equal access to public positions, equal and non-discriminatory treatment and further democratic principles pertinent to this field. To implement the Act, adequate conditions have to be created, in the first place the staff of personnel departments and the public managers will have to be trained. The most difficult task will be to transform the civil service without disturbing the operation of the respective authorities. As a result of many years´ absence of real personnel management, particularly staff appraisal, the data required for objective personnel decisions are missing. To expand and renew the personnel departments in state administration will be a uneasy task. The professional and age structure of their current staff is unsatisfactory. Conversely, there is an acute shortage of candidates with suitable qualifications. A massive transfer of staff currently employed to the civil service status is not a convenient solution for two reasons: (i) many employees are short of required competence, and (ii) thanks to the reform it will be easier to recruit new professionals with good education. Therefor it may be better to opt for a gradual and selective transfer of current employees to the civil service using an objective system of personnel assessment and selection. Furthermore, the employees with the necessary prerequisites will have to be granted the opportunity to complete and improve their qualification. Consideration may also be given to alternatives to tenure likely to provide guarantees of long-term employment independently of politics, such as the progressive increase of severance pay with the number of the years of employment in public administration, or the protection of employment in the pre-retirement period. It will be essential to gain broad support of the political class and the public employees themselves to these changes, and to minimize the risks involved in the transition to a new system. As quickly as possible, the reformed system must demonstrate its ability to enhance the quality and efficiency of administration. If not, it might be difficult to justify and explain to the public certain benefits that public employees are likely to draw from the new system. 9.2 Regulating the Numbers and the Remuneration of Civil ServantsRealistic estimates of the expected structural changes in numbers and competences of civil servants will have to be coordinated with the decisions concerning territorial decentralization and the reorganization of administrative offices. Some savings can be achieved e.g. by reducing the numbers of managing officials, abolishing units that are too small, eliminating overlapping activities, improving the use of IT, improving work organization, developing skills, etc. Staff increases resulting from the establishment of regions will have to be mitigated by staff transfers. This package of measures will have to be used to prevent ad-hoc cuts in the number of public servants under economic pressure, which are the worst form of controlling the size of the civil service. Generally speaking, however, the numbers of employees of our public administration are proportionately lower than those of EU member states. Moreover, the state machinery will have to be completed by some units and specialists resulting from the new tasks of the state connected with the regulation of market economy, EU requirements, etc. Cost reduction might be achieved by applying the „small civil service“ model, i.e. restricting the groups of employees subjected to a special civil service regime. In many countries with a career system more and more people tend to be employed on the basis of employment (even short-term) contracts; this method can be applied on a broader scale also in the Czech Republic. In this case the number of employees can be controlled by merely regulating the volume of the wage bill. As pointed out in SIGMA studies, the costs of the civil service represent a high but unavoidable investment, which pays back in the long run. The remuneration system must attract specialists of good standard and prevent corruption. Its improvement is one of the main prerequisites of public administration reform and further development. Stabilization and the high qualification requirements imposed on public administration employees necessitate higher salaries. Also, the terms of employment will have to include motivational elements (such as higher guarantees of the duration of employment, advantageous conditions for qualification improvement, etc.) It is important to improve salary motivation, particularly in key sectors and positions, and to introduce greater salary differentials. The current salary system can be further developed by increasing the number of salary classes from the present 12 to at least 14 (it is paradoxical if a deputy minister has the same salary classification as some rank-and-file officials). The mechanism of age promotion, which prefers age to qualification and performance, needs to be reconsidered. The present practice, in which low salaries of some specialists are supplemented with high personal bonuses, differs from the public sector remuneration policies of Western European countries both in terms of the amount paid through bonuses and in the criteria used (in Czech administration the decision is left practically to the discretion of individual managing officials). In Western European countries the bonuses, granted in accordance with accurately defined criteria, must be substantiated, and, as rule, do not exceed 20 % of class salaries. The future possibilities in the field of salary policy must be estimated soberly to avoid a de-motivating impact of potential savings achieved by reducing the formerly granted benefits. 9.3 Legal, Salary and Social Conditions of Employees of Territorial Self-GovernmentConditions analogous to those of the civil service must also be granted to the employees of territorial self-government authorities. The significance and the relationships of the two professional components of public administration must not be underrated. The requirements imposed on the professional performance of the tasks in the competence of self-governing entities will increase as a result of territorial decentralization and the scope of property and funds at their disposal. In our system, the employees of communal (municipal) self-governing bodies also assume a considerable share of state administration responsibilities. Unjustified disproportions in the status of both public servant groups would result in unnecessary social tension and deterioration of public services. These conditions must be so regulated as to grant the employees essential security and protection, stimulate professional and impartial exercise of public administration and improve its stability and continuity. At the same time, sufficient freedom to modify legal conditions of their employees must be left to the self-governing (particularly regional) bodies. It is necessary to foresee that similarly to other countries a number of tasks in this field will be fulfilled by self-governing associations of territorial self-government employees. Finally, also the present system of training of elected officials and employees of territorial self-government will have to be considerably improved and expanded. 9.4 Personnel ManagementPersonnel management in public administration has been virtually confined to record keeping. There is a critical shortage of qualified personnel specialists. The public managers often regard their responsibilities in personnel management as a bothersome drag; this attitude is very much due to a shortage of tools for achieving any real change in the structure, qualification and efficiency of their subordinates. The reform must introduce a modern system of personnel management, which is a key instrument for achieving public administration quality and efficiency. In the first place, the personnel system must cope with the consequences of spontaneous development in the past (excessive turnover, inadequate professional and language qualifications, shortage of generalists and of certain specialists, staff proliferation without corresponding results, etc.) and provide the prerequisites for an improvement of quality and efficiency of public administration. The measures to be taken will have to focus in particular:
9.5 Promoting Professional Ethics and Combating CorruptionApart from legal responsibilities, employment in public administration implies moral obligations connected with the exercise of public functions. At the present time, ethical conduct of state and public officials is under intensive scrutiny in numerous states and international organizations, which is very much due to the growing efforts to eliminate corruption. The documents of international organizations mention three principal instruments of improving the ethical standard of civil service: ethical codes and directives, personnel management (with particular reference to the role of public managers in promoting ethics) and rigorous control drawing the appropriate conclusions (see e.g. the Recommendations of the OECD Council for the Improvement of Ethical Conduct of Public Service, adopted on 23 April 1988). The objective of the reform in our conditions is to promote the creation of an environment that characterises a consolidated civil service where the desired attitudes, conduct and behaviour are strongly stimulated by professional ethics (professional honour). Due to historical development, ethical values and standards in public administration of the Czech Republic have been eroded and the number of role models is low. Therefore the reform must concentrate on creating the awareness of shared values and written as well as unwritten rules of ethical conduct in the state (public) service. It will be necessary:
Fighting corruption is another high-priority task. Both domestic and foreign investigations show that corruption has become an endemic disease of Czech public administration, distorting the business environment, poisoning public and private life and putting the Czech Republic in an unfavourable competitive position internationally. It is necessary to encourage the identification and elimination of systemic causes of corruption, which include messy organization and poor personnel policy. In this respect the following tasks must be emphasized:
Similar political objectives must be pursued in other components of public administration. The Government must create the necessary legal prerequisites and support the development of a social climate ostracizing corruption by all possible means. 9.6 Developing Human Resources in Public AdministrationThe requirements imposed on public administration by its reform cannot be satisfied without marked improvements in the development of human resources - the various employees of public administration. The preceding chapters have presented a number of suggestions and requirements in this respect, concerning in particular the training required in particular areas and specific tasks of the reform. Apart from that a project study is currently in progress, commissioned by the National Training Fund with the purpose of proposing a system of education and training for public administration of the Czech Republic. Another recently completed study has produced an overall review of university education for public administration in the Czech Republic. The development of human resources in all areas and at all levels of public administration will have to be based on the following principles:
It should not be overlooked that the main source of new recruits with excellent education for public administration are the universities and secondary schools. Therefore the reform should also aim to assess and improve (by formulating and implementing specific recommendations) pre-employment education for public administration provided by these establishments. Unfortunately, at the present time the Czech Republic lacks a suitable professional base for developing and managing a training system built on these exacting principles. Such a base needs to be created as a matter of urgency. It should be a national institute of public administration, to be established as a short-term priority and built up to operate at full capacity as a medium-term priority. This new institution should assume the following responsibilities:
Apart from training proper the new institute should provide other services to public administration, including consulting, research, documentation and information services, and a publication service. These and other functions of the new institution should be defined with regard to, and coordinated with, other measures and institutional arrangements for improving public administration in the Czech Republic on a long-term basis (see also paras. 7.7 and 11.6). It will also be necessary to strengthen the Institute of Local Administration, which is concerned primarily with training for local state administration and local self-government. Both institutions should foster the spirit of healthy cooperation and mutual support. A new training system meeting all these requirements will have to be designed and established as a short-term priority and fully developed as a medium-term priority of the reform. Moreover, training must immediately start being used to expedite and facilitate the launching of the reform. More specifically, there are the following immediate priorities:
|