1.1 Audit findings and opinions
1.1.1 The central recruitment regulated by the 2011 recruitment system
Since the 1989 recruitment system had been implemented for many years and was unable to meet the needs of social development, the Public Administration and Civil Service Bureau (hereinafter referred to as “SAFP” according to Portuguese abbreviation) conducted a consultation in 2006, which pointed out the problems of the system; meanwhile, it suggested a centralized management model as the direction for the reformation of recruitment system. After five years, the central recruitment regulated by the administrative regulation no. 23/2011 was officially put into practice, i.e. 2011 recruitment system.
In the 34 occupational categories regulated by the Law no. 14/2009, only the recruitment of senior technician and assistant technician adopted the “2011 recruitment system” initially, while the remaining 32 categories were still recruited by the departments themselves, so the coverage of the “2011 recruitment system” was low and the progress of filling the job vacancies was unsatisfactory. After reviewing the system, SAFP summarized the following reasons: the time for each stage of recruitment to be carried out was too long to timely respond to the departments’ demands for staff; and it was the difficulty to form the jury, therefore these were the reason why SAFP only held six examinations from 2012 to 2016; also, the multi-tiered distribution system and various factors made the distribution procedure took a long time and complicated. Moreover, when SAFP allocated the applicants to different departments through the way of drawing, it did not take into account the needs of departments and the preferences of the candidates. SAFP pointed out that according to the recruitment and selection procedures set up in the existing regulations, it was impossible to implement the central recruitment for 34 categories in short term.
Before consulting the direction for the new recruitment system, SAFP had already aware of the problems existing in the two previous recruitment systems; however, it did not formulate any corresponding solution in the recruitment system launched in 2011, which caused the same problems of the centralized management mode of the 1989 recruitment system to the 2011 recruitment system. In addition, SAFP started by recruiting senior technician and assistant technician which had higher professional levels than those previous recruited categories through examinations, also, it bundled the vacancies of various departments to conduct the recruitment, thus causing more serious staff mismatches and longer recruitment process.
1.1.2 The standardized management of recruitment regulated by the 2016 recruitment system
In 2016, since SAFP could not amend the law in time, therefore it launched the standardized management of recruitment regulated by the Administrative Regulation no.14/2016, i.e. 2016 recruitment system, in order to solve the problems in 2011 recruitment system and reduce the departments’ long-standing demands for staff. SAFP respectively conducted three examinations for the categories of senior technician, assistant technician and assistant in 2016; each examination involved one comprehensive competence assessment test as well as 13 to 100 professional or occupational competence assessment tests.
For the occupational categories that have common job content and no special requirements, SAFP and other departments did not have collaboration in the examinations. Besides, since most of applicants applied to many departments, therefore, the number of the applications for occupational competence assessment test was significantly higher than the actual applicants. However, only the number of applications had a numerical increase, but the number of applicants who could actually be selected by the departments remained the same, which resulted in an overlap of examination resources. On the other hand, due to the larger number of applications, the time and resources invested in each procedure had to increase accordingly. The total expenditure on the recruitment of the three categories under the “2016 recruitment system” was 31,637,009.45 patacas, in which the expenditure on the professional or occupational competence assessment tests reached 25,663,721.85 patacas. Although the examinations cost a lot of public funds, the average attendance rate in the written tests for the recruitment of senior technician and assistant technician was only 30% to 40%, which was lower than the attendance percentage of 60% of those previous examinations held by the departments themselves, therefore, wasting the resources invested by the departments.
In addition, although the examinations were held on close dates, SAFP only provided simple coordination of the examination dates while the examination venues had to be found by the departments themselves. In order to avoid clash between examinations of same category, and together with the large number of applicants, the departments had great difficulties in renting examination venues. With regard to the electronic platform for application of government positions, SAFP allowed applicants to apply to all vacancies through one click, which caused more than 100,000 applications for the professional competence assessment tests of senior technician; however, after evaluating the professional qualifications of the applicants, more than half of them were found to be unqualified, wasting the time invested by departments to deal with the unqualified applications. Therefore, SAFP’s deficiencies in the coordination and support of the recruitment work increased the workload of departments and the resources spent in recruiting staff.
To sum up, the problems encountered in the 2011 and 2016 recruitment system are different, but they all revolved around the original problems of the two types of recruitment mode under the old system. Although there is no perfect recruitment mode in the world, the key is whether SAFP has endeavored to solve or alleviate the problems arising from the nature of the system. In addition, the defects of the system design and the failure to fully support the recruiting departments aggravated the problems in system, but their nature also has not changed. The key to the above problems is that during the previous decision making until the 2011 recruitment system, SAPF ignored the execution and the actual situation of operation, which eventually caused problems and disorders that are hard to solve.
1.2 Audit suggestions:
SAFP should:
Before launching a new system, thoroughly study and plan seriously, analyze the advantages and disadvantages, foresee the problems that may occur and formulate its solutions. Besides, through reviewing the previous systems, it should pay attention to the findings and make a detailed plan to solve the problems found effectively. In addition, SAFP can make effective improvement plan to avoid the reoccurrence of same problems or similar unreasonable situations. Since the relevant system involves many departments of the SAR Government, SAFP should formulate a reality-based, viable and forward-looking system.
Ensure that when designing the new recruitment system, it has clear objectives; and base on them, SAFP should plan in a pragmatic manner, analyze carefully and take into account the appropriate plans during the drafting process. Meanwhile, the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the new system should be considered carefully from the perspective of the SAR Government as a whole, in order to achieve the objectives according to the principles of impartiality, fairness, efficiency and effectiveness.
