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Blerina Llalla
The strategy for a new reform in Public Administration
On July 4th, The Ministry of Innovation and Public Administration introduced a new strategy for the establishment of a special group Albania – EU about the reform in Public Administration. The draft – strategy of 2015-2020 will be generally based on 4 points, which will be founded on the process of doing politics, civil service, management of human resources and administration procedures.
On behalf of Mrs. Minister, this is a strategy designed in the framework of the reform in administration and in the framework of European standards in order to provide an efficient functioning through new technologies. She introduced also some statistics in the framework of the reform in administration, which began initially through online applications and recruitments during March – September 2014. But if we would see the public reports from different people, we are faced with people’s suspicions towards reforms’ development and functioning of the employment application process. This happens because we are faced with a superposition of reforms in administration on the basis of political or strategic standards of every institution. Of course this has led to numerous complaints from the ex – employees, who mainly confess the malfunction of the process of online applications according to the standards, set due to current reforms. Let see this strategy as a positive initiative towards the improvement of employment policy and recruitment which remain crucial issues for Albanian citizens.
If we take a look at the public communication of MIPA via its official site, we will see that mostly of the sessions are partly updated. But it should have been well updated on behalf of modernism and communication since it is a department, priorities of which consist in transparency and technology.
But what happens with the website of DPA? Due to the new policies, the employment process in administration is done only online via this website. You can find early publications and there exists a malfunction of its system, including here the updating process or problems during the access process, there are many cases when you are denied the access in this website. During the last 4 months, there has been noticed a total inefficiency of this website regarding its maintenance and services. Of course these features have a public cost.
If we will try to contact the addresses, given for the citizens to apply, recruitment or for informing purposes, then we would have an automatic answer of the system in our electronic mail. This would assure us that there has been set up a new system of online applications for vacant positions, announced in administration. Regarding the fact that this system aims the facilitation of the way of application, in order to participate in the competitions, organized in groups an application will be established in March and this is a period when the vacant positions of the 2015 year will be published. They also encourage us not to lose interest in fulfilling the registration form.
This of course doesn’t take away our attention from the main problem of this system: recruitment, which remains the basis for the carrier’s perspective of every citizen and civil employee in administration. If it isn’t possible to receive information about employment opportunities, if you can’t be enrolled as an applicant because the website doesn’t give you the access to do that and the website isn’t updated or functional, then what we can say about the transparency of this application process? How is made the selection or the movement for many employees, ex-employees or unemployed people who aim this recruitment category?
If we will highlight some of the problems that continue to bother the reality, according to public contradictions or different political and social debates, we would see these other problems as well, towards the innovations in the change of dimension of the administration or the employment sector in general:
Political agreements and coalitions before and after the elections are related to the number of vacant positions. Some media and national perception, some studies of different NPO-s share the same idea: that these agreements and coalitions will end up dealing with employment sharing. This way, they will minimize the chances for meritocracy that can be found in some findings or media showing ups. The group of partial militants, who helped in gathering votes, will certainly demand profits as job positions according to the above mentioned agreements. Nowadays in media is being discussed about the division of municipalities or election areas that will have the above-mentioned consequence.
The corruption is the most hurtful concept in the discussion about employment. Financial profit still has a negative role in the discussions of every level. It happens very often that people pay for a vacant job position. This happens in media and national perception as well, but there are of course cases of committal proceedings and people are charged guilty for these accusations. But in fact most of the people prefer to remain silent about these incidents.
Thirdly, the concepts of nepotism and clientelism are very strong towards competition and meritocracy. There are cases when the competitions are done just for formal purposes and the winners are predetermined or the winner is favoured in different ways.
These have always been, are and will be the incidents and challenges of every government, against which we all should fight. In order to reduce these events, there should be raised a commitment and a strategy as efficient as possible. The reason is that the employment remains the challenge and priority of every government.
This would be reached by providing the functioning of practices and new methods applied in function of the selective meritocratic and transparent processes. In order to raise the effectiveness of these reforms, to improve the customer service, to encourage functioning, to reduce costs that can be caused by the observance of duties and practice of responsibilities on strategic institutional basis, it would be needed a greater help from the monitoring groups. For this reason, it would be better for us to have even the announcement and publication of all phases of the competition procedure, starting from the very first moment of the announcement of vacant positions till the moment of choosing the winners, on behalf of the AP and this would have an immediate and positive impact.
There would have been established protective control features in order for this administration to be really interested in the needs of each customer since the most important challenge for the government would be improving the customer service’s quality and verification of their quality via information technology and the communication in order to have employees interested in people needs. This kind of structure will empower the administration toward to measurable results and to a more effective work. The news about a new strategy according to EU standards is considered to be a very positive initiation in modernizing and growth of Albanian public administration’s performance. It is seen as a necessity and an assurance toward the development and growth of contents in this crucial point of every institution’s functioning.
If we would mention the new ideas, values and above all the successes of a democratic government, it will be good for us to be aware that the challenge of “modernism and growth of Albanian public administration’s performance” is the most obvious indicator of what we are and of what we will be one day in the communion of EU countries. Let’s hope that the Ministry of Innovation and Public Administration will have the awareness, good will and lawful responsibility, as the crucial and lawful responsible for the realization of these ideas.