With an intention to contribute to the break with the existing practices of nepotism and politicisation in the state administration, Institute Alternative (IA) has started monitoring of the implementation of the new Law on Civil Servants and State Employees.
New Law entered into force on January 1 and is expected to introduce expert and working qualities and candidates’ abilities as the key criteria of recruitment and promotion in the state administartion bodies.
Yet, certain provisions in the Law are wide enough for different interpretations, and the head of the body still has a discretionary power not to choose the candidate with the highest rank and to provide an adequate justification for that.
The essential contribution of the Law and related by-laws to the improvement of the state administration system will thus depend on the consistency and on the way of their implementation.
IA will during 2013 monitor implementation of those provisions which are most susceptible to the abuse.
In the first instance, we will follow the number of cases in which the head of the body uses an exceptional right not to choose the candidate which received the highest rank during the procedure of testing candidates’ abilities.
We think that this exceptional permission, if it becomes a dominant practice, might hamper the possibility for recruitment and promotion in the state administration to be based on the merit system instead on distribution of posts and working positions in the state administration in line with the party loyalty and friendship and kinship ties.
Also, the Decree which regulates the way of testing the candidates’ abilities leaves a relatively high percentage for the evaluation of the oral interview. In addition, certain criteria for scoring the interview, such as personal performance and showing of motivation, are largely of subjective nature.
We will devote special attention to the number of candidate who lodge appeals to the procedure of selecting the candidates, or address the Administrative Inspection with regard to the irregularities during the procedure of testing candidates’ abilities.
Milena Milošević
Policy Analyst
