Conference line-up identifies reforms

STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, Oct 19, 2005, Page 4

Examination Yuan President Yao Chia-wen yesterday gives the closing speech at the conference on national administrative personnel systems held by the Examination Yuan. PHOTO: LIAO CHENG-HUI, TAIPEI TIMESN

Examination Yuan President Yao Chia-wen (姚嘉文) said yesterday that the Examination Yuan will react actively to society's expectation of reducing unreasonable high pension payouts for public servants and keeping up the reform of the civil service system in order to make it meet today's needs and the challenges of globalization.

Yao made the remarks yesterday in the closing speech of the conference on the national administrative personnel system held by the Examination Yuan.

For the past few years, Yao said, the Examination Yuan has been studying a comprehensive scheme that is able to improve the existing pension payouts for public servants but also take care of public servants' retirement life.

"The reform of public servants' pensions is not just because President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) has vowed to correct it. In fact, it is an obligation for the Examination Yuan to react to the public's strong expectation for a just society," Yao said.

According to the current regulations, the country rewards retirees from the military, government and public schools with monthly incomes as much as 30 percent higher than their salary, due to preferential interest rates of up to 18 percent.

"Open discussion and transparent policy-making are the best ways to reduce the public's misgivings and misunderstandings."

Yao Chia-wen, Examination Yuan president

Yao pointed out that the Ministry of Civil Service (銓敘部), under the Examination Yuan, has proposed a draft bill to the Council of the Examination Yuan for review and he also urged department chiefs of the Examination Yuan to make full efforts to back this reform plan and also expound the meaning of the reform to public servants.

Yao also pointed out that Examination Yuan has been devoted to hammering out the improvement of the civil service system and trying to devise a new and updated civil service system that is suitable for Taiwan's society.

"We will not stop reform, even though we cannot see the result of the reform in the short-term. But as long as we hold on there, we will see it eventually," Yao said.

Besides, Yao also noted that ample communication is needed whenever reform is implemented, asking Examination Yuan members to communicate with both subjects that would be part of reform and the mass media.

"Open discussion and transparent policy-making are the best ways to reduce the public's misgivings and misunderstandings," Yao said.

A summing-up forum was held on the last day of the conference to present the opinions and suggestions offered by over 200 governmental officials and experts on three major topics concerning the reform of government systems -- including finding diverse methods for screening civil servants, building up a flexible system of employing civil servants and activating the channels of appointing public officials and improving the civil-service training system and cultivating public officials of high quality.

These three topics were respectively discussed by three ministries under the Examination Yuan including the Ministry of Examination, the Ministry of Civil Service and the Civil Service Protection and Training Commission.

Yao presided over the summing-up forum and the participants of the three groups delivered their ideas and opinions on the three topics one after another.

Suggestions of the topic on finding diverse methods for screening civil servants were reported by Examination Yuan member Tsai Shih-yuan (蔡式淵) and many group members proposed to increase interviews or oral tests for those who pass the national examination as a second stage of examinations so that competent public servants can be more precisely found.

Devising alternative plans to solve the shortage of public servants in Taiwan's remote districts will be a priority for the Ministry of Examination and requesting examinees to have language certificates will be listed as one of their qualifications of participating in exams.

Building up a database management system that collects all the questions tested in past examinations would be extremely helpful to increase the credibility and efficiency of the national civil service examinations.

But the suggestion about authorizing the operation of the national examinations to private sectors was opposed by some of the Examination Yuan members. Both Minister of Civil Service Chu Wu-hsien (朱武獻) and Examination member Hung Te-hsuan (洪德旋) argued that the national examinations should be preserved as the patent of the Examination Yuan, as it is proficient in handling the fairness of all kinds of recruitment exams and they doubted whether private companies could maintain the principles of equity and justice that the Examination Yuan have been proud of.

Examination member Bian Yu-yuan (邊裕淵) presented the final conclusions of the second topic of building up a flexible system of employing civil servants and activating the channels of appointing public officials and a number of group members found that many governmental chiefs have vague ideas about the regulations of employment and consequently some misunderstandings happen.

Therefore, according to Bian, the Ministry of Civil Service should request that administrative chief have a full understanding of the employment statute and also educate their subordinates about related regulations.

Regarding the topic of improving the civil-service training system and cultivating public officials of high quality, seven suggestions were made in the discussion on Monday afternoon, according to the group's leader, Examination Yuan member Liu Hsing-shan (劉興善).

Some obsolete articles from the Training and Development of Public Servants Law (公務人員訓練進修法) should be corrected or deleted to meet current needs and training and development organizations should be downsized and merged to save needless waste of resources.

Establishing a national civil service institute that focuses on training public servants' analytic ability and organizational thinking was also one of the conclusions, according to Liu.

Besides, strengthening the interaction between governmental departments and enterprises would be considered a way to increase public servants' working efficiency and half the amount of lifetime learning credit should be related to a public servants' job.

But Hung pointed out that coordination other than competition should be the core value for governmental departments and those successful experiences in enterprises might not be transplanted into departments.

"Government organizations are not free markets after all and administrations have responsibility for saving expenditure for taxpayers. In fact, we also have stricter standards and have to be more careful when it comes to using budgets," Hung said.