Issue ? 42. February 2014

Civil Service Reform in Vietnam: Gradual Change as a Way to Success

PhD, Vice-Dean, Faculty of Organization and Personnel Management, National Academy of Public Administration, Viet Nam.
E-mail: hoangstd10@yahoo.com

In recent decades, the process of globalization has changed Vietnam profoundly, both the economical and the social life. Public administration and civil service have to change to meet the challenges of this profoundly different society.

The civil service reform was carried out for the past ten years. It’s main goal are 1) building a democratic, strong, clean, professional, modern, effective public administration, and 2) creating the contingent of capable, productive and ethical cadre workers and civil servants.

The civil service reform was designed to gradually transform the traditional civil service — centralized, bureaucratic and ineffective — into a modern one — dynamic and effective.

The reform, however, was not entirely successful — neither it’s development, nor it’s practical implementation. The existing government machinery, civil institutions and civil service practices all hindered the reform to some extent. There are some lessons learned from the implementation of the civil service reform on leadership, planning, institutional reform and creating strong civil service personnel. The main one is this: big success is achieved in small steps. That means, in the Vietnamese context, that to success, civil service reform should be carried out on a step by step basis.

The reform will be continued in the future, it’s guiding document being the newly-issued Public Administration Reform Master Program for 2011–2020. The stated objectives of that program are: “institutional reform; improving the civil service’s quality of service by creating a more competent and productive service; reforming the salary policy to achieve higher motivation and higher productivity of the cadre workers, civil servants and public servants; improving the quality of public administration service and public service”. PAR for 2011–2020 has 6 objectives, 7 solutions and 16 projects.

Keywords

Vietnam, public administration, reform, cadres, civil servants, civil services.