Experts of Uzbekistan study European experience of civil service

Thus, the Strategy for Actions of further progress of the Republic of Uzbekistan involves the development of the Concept of Administrative Reforms for 2017-2021 and the introduction of the draft law "On Public Service" in the Oliy Majlis of the Republic of Uzbekistan this year. The concept of administrative reform in the Republic of Uzbekistan provides for improving the structure and increasing the effectiveness of government administration, decentralizing public administration and ensuring its accountability and transparency. Reform in the public service is directly related to administrative reforms.

With the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia and the joint project of the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Uzbekistan and UNDP "Local Governance Support Project: Phase-2", a study tour of our country’s delegation to Latvia was organized from 7th to 12th May 2017, in order to study and share experience in the area of reforming public administration and services, especially in development of relevant draft laws and their implementation. The delegation includes representatives of the Cabinet of Ministers, the ministries of economy, finance, justice, labor and foreign affairs of the Republic of Uzbekistan, the Council of the Federation of Trade Unions of Uzbekistan, the United Nations Development Program in Uzbekistan.

A number of key reforms in the sphere of public administration and service have been successfully implemented in Latvia. For example, the Public Administration Reform Strategy, same-titled laws were drafted and adopted, and experience of their development and implementation, as well as lessons learned, will be of interest to the representatives of Uzbekistan. A regulatory and legal base for the civil service has been created - the Law "On the Civil Service" has been adopted, distinctions have been made between public servants and employees of budget organizations, political and administrative appointees, and a special state body for public service management - the State Chancellery has been established.

On May 9, Uzbek experts held a number of meetings in the State Chancellery of Latvia, during which they discussed strategic documents on public administration reform, the Law "On Public Service", the human resources management system in public administration, the delineation of professional civil servants and political appointees, the classification and evaluation system of the activities in the civil service, recruitment and promotion of civil servants, a high-level managers’ program in the state service and centralized contests for these positions, as well as remuneration of public service labor.

Director of the State Chancellery of Latvia Mr. Jānis Citskovskis, welcoming guests, expressed the hope that mutual exchange of experience will allow finding optimal solutions in the improvement of the public service system.

During the meeting Ilhom Khalpaev, Head of the Economic Legislation Department of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Uzbekistan, noted that the experience of Latvia in reforming the civil service and management is interesting, and Uzbek delegation would like to receive norms and institutional mechanisms that would be useful in practice in our country.

For example, the existence of a special state authorized body for civil service affairs became one of the most interesting observations of the delegation members. International practice demonstrates several possible options for creating such institutions. The first option, when the authorized agency is created in the structure of the central government - the Presidential Administration or the Government Office. The USA went in this way - the Office of Personnel Management is part of the structure of the Executive Office of the President of the United States. In Georgia, the Civil Service Bureau is part of the Secretariat of the Prime Minister of Georgia.

The second option is to assign the functions of regulating the civil service to a certain department. For example, in Germany, within the structure of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, a separate department is responsible for the coordination of public service issues. Finally, the third most common option is the creation of a separate department - the Ministry or the Agency for Civil Service Affairs. In particular, in France, Korea and China, certain departments in the government system are responsible for the regulation and coordination of public service.

In Uzbekistan, the centralization of the organizational and legal mechanism in the public service will provide guarantees of selection and promotion based on merit, legal protection of civil servants from arbitrary decisions of management, creation of a single staff reserve of administrative civil servants, as well as the identification of long-term benchmarks and medium-term development programs of public service.

In addition, the Uzbek delegation also held meetings at the Latvian School of Public Administration and the Riga City Council, during which the issues of public administration in Latvia, its structure and functioning, the system of training civil servants, and personnel for local government bodies were discussed.

The visit of the delegation of Uzbekistan to Latvia continues.