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Reform Efforts in Civil Service Management since Doi Moi

The Ordinance of Cadre and Civil Servants in 1998;
Under the Ordinance, cadres and civil servants were Vietnamese on the state payroll and salaried by the
state budget, working in state agencies, Party agencies, socio-political organizations or the armed forces.

The revision of the Ordinance on Cadre and Civil Servants in 2000 and 2003
The Ordinance was revised twice in 2000 and 2003 with two striking novelties in the 2003 amendments.

The Law on Public Officials and Civil Servants which will come into effect in January 2010
Under these two laws, the concepts of can bo (cadres), cong chuc (civil servants) and vien chuc (public
employees) are clearly defined:
 Cadres are Vietnamese citizens who are elected, approved or appointed to hold posts or titles for a
certain term of office in Party or state agencies or socio-political organizations at the central,
provincial or district level, and several types of commune-level cadres who are on the state payroll
and salaried by the state budget.
 Civil servants are Vietnamese citizens who are recruited and appointed to ranks and positions or
titles not based on term of office in Party or state agencies.

Civil servants are classified into the following 5 categories:

• Senior Civil Servant (10 scales) – including public officials
• Major Civil Servant, and equivalent (12 scales)
• Civil Servant and equivalent (14 scales)
• Staff (10 scales)
• Ordinary Employee (17 scales)
Civil servant recruitment process in public administration agencies
Civil servant recruitment in public administration is a multiple-stage process conducted in an inter-related
sequence which ensuring objectivity, fairness and accuracy in recruitment.
 Identify human resource demand and quantity to be recruited;
 Setting up recruitment plan;
 Establish Recruitment Regulation;
 Announce vacancies;
 Collect and review registration portfolios;
 Organize competitions and/or non-competitive examinations;
 Consolidate examination results;
 Announce results of recruitments, complaint solving or verification (if required);
 Issue recruitment decision;
 Review and evaluate recruitment;
 Appoint to civil service rank.

Format and subjects of examinations

Applicants to civil service recruitment examinations are obliged to take four subjects:
 General knowledge test
 Professional test
 IT skills test
 foreign language test

Recruitment Council
On the base of number of applicants, the head of recruiting agency has jurisdiction to establish the
Recruitment Council, in case of holding competitive recruitment examinations, and Review Council, in
case of holding review session to select applicants.
In the case of non-existence of Recruitment Council, the personnel management departments/divisions of
the authorized recruiting agency conduct recruitment activities; concurrently, assisting units are still
established in recruitment as regulated.

Training and Development

The major types of training and upgrading programs for civil servants are residential mandatory courses
on politics and state management. These courses are designed to meet the general requirements of
experts, principal experts and senior experts grades, hence the training content are, to a large extent, not
related to the practicalities of the work environment and tend to resemble academic degrees. Foreign
languages and computer application are also compulsory training courses.

Performance Management (PM)

Three-tiered assessments of all civil servants are conducted regularly.
(1) Self-assessment
(2) Peer review
(3) Evaluation by immediate superior

Formal appraisal criteria focus on character traits and compliance with general principles rather than job-
specific targets.

The need to avoid failing to comply with one’s duties is emphasized rather than achieving or exceeding
individual targets that are clearly linked to the broader goals of the work unit or agency.

Rewards System
Vietnam Cadres and civil servants are employed to materially and spiritually encourage them to
accomplish their tasks. Commendation and reward are diverse in forms, including the award of
certificates of merits, diplomas of merits, medals, orders, emulation titles or honorable state titles, rank
promotion.

Problems and Weakness

a) Human resource planning
There is yet no proper systematic personnel planning an overall organization development plan, based on an
analysis of the current situation, the aims of within operation and predictions of personnel changes that may
occur in the future, both in quantity and quality, to ensure that the needs and aims of the organizations are
achieved.

b) Recruitment and Promotion

Recruitment is largely decentralized and public service agencies, if they are competent enough, can organize
their own recruitment examinations as well. However, a weakness of the current practice in recruitment and
promotion, is that the examinations mainly focus on attempting to ensure fairness, openness and objectiveness.

c) Training and development

The training content is to a large extent, not related to the practicalities of the work environment and tends to
resemble academic degrees. Current training and development of officials is largely ineffective. This is because
the current training methods are overly focused on general theoretical and legal information in large lecture
halls, rather than on developing work related skills and competences. In addition, within state agencies there is
little or no culture of continuous learning. Long-term development activities such as continuous professional
development and post-training follow up like mentoring and coaching is largely missing.

Comparison