The key objective of the public administration reform is to change the outdated ineffective system by using the developed democracies' best practices, instruments, and institutes, said Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Hroisman during the Public Administration Reform: Challenges and Prospects conference.
"The new public administration system means new operating principles, accountability, service orientation, and professional civil service that employs top professionals," — stressed the head of the Government.
He also added that now everyone can openly apply for a civil position through an open competitive selection, including for vacancies that were unavailable a few years ago because the system was closed.
This was supported by the First Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine Max Nefyodov: "I was surprised at the quality of the existing procedure of staff selection for civil service. I experienced the changes first hand!"
In turn, the Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers Oleksandr Sayenko noted that the public administration reform draws significant public interest.
"A narrow group of experts used to take interest in the public administration reform, and now powerful teams of professionals are taking care of it! Besides we see the society is demanding it," — he noted.
Volodymyr Hroisman also added that the reform had created social elevators.
"That hundreds and thousands of young experts with solid education can join central government means we can pool better potential for public administration," — he said.
At the conference, experts also mentioned key achievements of the reform. These include:
- commencing the reorganization of 10 pilot ministries, the CMU Secretariat, 2 agencies, where 58 directorates were set up. About 600 new civil servants have taken office already;
- launching the one vacancy portal at career.gov.ua, through which 32,000K+ candidates have electronically made their submissions. This is an unprecedented interest in civil service vacancies — an average of 24 candidates per vacancy;
- introducing 125 e-services for businesses and the public, and 50 more are to be set up this year;
- recruiting young talent, business, and NGO experts to civil service owing to the new competitive selection procedure. Now about 40% general directors are aged 31 to 40. The youngest female general director is 28. 38% participants selected to all of the positions had no previous experience in the civil service.
Conference speakers included the Deputy Chair of the Administration of the President, who hoped that the public administration reform would persist, and movement in this direction would continue.
"We'll maximize our effort to keep the best we have achieved in the public administration reform!," — he noted.
Besides, according to him, the creation of directorates responsible for policy analysis is an innovation of the reform that they plan to implement in the future Presidential Office.
Reference:
The Reform of Public Administration: Challenges and Prospects conference was held on June 24 at UNIT.City and brought together representatives of the Administration of the President of Ukraine and the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, state secretaries and staff members of ministries, international partners, members of technical assistance projects in the area of the public administration reform, and NGO experts. Presented during this event, the brand #StepTorward (#КрокНазустріч) is primarily about the government's service orientation, a step towards the citizen.
