Trends and Development in Progress & Civil Service

• trends and developments in progress -

  Reform efforts are ongoing in the area of right-sizing government and reengineering both local and national offices, in response to public perception that government needs to be more efficient and must redeploy its people to frontline services while thinning out the traditionally people-heavy central offices.
• trends and developments in progress -

  A Presidential Committee on Effective Governance oversees this process. Practically all Presidents undertake reorganizations upon their assumption, but current efforts are focused on minimizing overlapping or duplicating structures, ensuring optimization of human resources and the abolition of offices whose functions have been rendered marginal over time.
• Legal Dimensions of Public Administration

  • Main Strong and Weak Points - The strength of the Philippine administrative system is its plethora of laws, rules and regulations on every imaginable area of administration. This may also be its greatest source of weakness. Over-regulation, in many parts, provides opportunities for so called fixers, people who facilitate transactions for a fee, to ply their trade in government offices. One-stop shop arrangements have been set up in critical areas like investments and importation but the pernicious practices of fixers continue.
• Legal Dimensions of Public Administration

  • “Public bidding” Practices and Procedures - An entire chapter of the administrative code is devoted to contracts and public bidding.
• Legal Dimensions of Public Administration

  • “Public bidding” Practices and Procedures - There is a manual prepared by the National Economic Development Authority on the hiring of consultants for foreign-assisted projects alone.
• Legal Dimensions of Public Administration

  • “Public bidding” Practices and Procedures - Department of Budget and Management and Commission on Audit also has its own rules relating to bidding, hiring, and contracting of local consultants
• Legal Dimensions of Public Administration

  • “Public bidding” Practices and Procedures - it is possible to synchronize these rules, they are separately issued and require different submissions to these various government agencies.
• Legal Dimensions of Public Administration

  • “Public bidding” Practices and Procedures - The utilization of the budget requires separate and different reports to various authorities, necessitating additional personnel for this purpose.
• Legal Dimensions of Public Administration

  • “Public bidding” Practices and Procedures - There are continuing calls for deregulation, but this process is largely left to the discretion of the operating managers and there is little incentive for undertaking a really thorough review of regulations that may already be irrelevant, outdated or unnecessary.
• Legal Dimensions of Public Administration

  • International competitive bidding - this is usually done only for foreign-assisted projects or for big-ticket items like airplanes or tanks, for which there are no local agents available.
• Legal system protecting the citizens against the decision of public authorities - There are plenty of administrative tribunals as well as regular courts where citizens can dispute decisions of public administration authorities.

  As an example, a dispute relative to the claims of a worker for money related to his employment would theoretically have 14 doors available for possible resolution
• Legal system protecting the citizens against the decision of public authorities

  • An ombudsman system exists which is provided for in the national Constitution.
• Legal system protecting the citizens against the decision of public authorities

  • There is a Public Attorney’s Office for litigants who feel that they cannot afford private counsel.
• Legal system protecting the citizens against the decision of public authorities

  • There is a Commission for Human Rights that looks into possible violations of rights of citizens.
• Legal system protecting the citizens against the decision of public authorities

  • Many of these offices can look at problems, motu proprio or on their own initiative. Quite often, however, there are enough cases on file to keep the dispute resolution bodies occupied. The complaint often is that the wheels of justice, whether administrative or legal, grind exceedingly slowly.
• Civil Service

  • Recruitment and Career - The civil service forms part of a constitutional mandate premised on merit and fitness.
• Civil Service

  • Recruitment and Career - The Civil Service Commission used to sit more than 500,000 people annually for its professional and sub-professional examinations.
• Civil Service

  • Recruitment and Career - It still undertakes regularly scheduled examinations but is also able to conduct these on demand through a computer-assisted test system that allows for immediate results.
• Civil Service

  • Recruitment and Career - Applicants for positions for which skills, rather than the usual paper and pencil examination, are needed, have to take trade tests with the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority.
• Civil Service

  • Recruitment and Career - After one passes the examination, one applies at his or her preferred office where additional requirements may be imposed by the hiring office.
• Civil Service

  • Recruitment and Career - The final decision to hire belongs to the office even as the Civil Service Commission may disapprove an appointment for not complying with the rules, regulations or standards.
• Civil Service

  • Duration of tenure - Tenure is usually up to age 65 unless one is separated for cause earlier. However, there are certain officials and employees who, because of the nature of their jobs have tenure that is co- terminus with the appointing authority.
• Civil Service

  • Duration of tenure - Drivers and private secretaries (primarily confidential positions) of political appointees (policy- determining) and those who are in very specialized fields (highly technical), like nuclear scientists, are not required to go through the competitive examination system. They are expected to meet the education requirements.
• Civil Service

  • Duration of tenure - Another distinct category of employees are those who are in casual or contractual positions. By definition, they are not tenured and are allowed to work seasonally or for the duration of a particular project.
• Three levels of Position in Civil Service

  • First level - consist of those who are in manual, clerical, custodial, or trades and craft groups.
• Three Levels of Positions in Civil Service

  • Second Level- includes the technical and professional group or those who have finished college degrees with certain specializations. They form the salary band between salary grades 11-24.
• Three Levels of Positions in Civil Service

  • Third level - highest level in the career service The executive class, forms the government’s managerial corps and occupies salary grades 25-33. Salary grade 33 belongs to the President while salary  grade 1 is assigned to a laborer.
• System of Promotion - requires progressively higher qualifications.
• System of Promotion - Seniority was a major factor, but increasingly performance is being given more weight, thus allowing for what is known as “deep selection “ or the movement of people, not necessarily next in rank, but who may have shown better performance.
• System of Promotion - A lateral system of entrance is allowed even for higher positions, particularly for second level positions where the pool for selection is the entire bureaucracy.
• • System of Promotion - The choice for first level promotions usually revolves only among personnel of a particular office.
• • System of Promotion - Career executive service officers are appointed to a generic rank and may be assigned anywhere in government for as long as there is no diminution of rank or pay.
• Training and Human Resources Policy - The government has active human resource development programs that include subsidized degree programs for people who pass competitive examinations, continuing training for more specialized needs like computer literacy, value formation, service orientation and similar subjects. Employees also have access to counseling, job enrichment, cross-posting and other HRD interventions that allow them to gain additional skills.
• Social Security - which takes care of private sector employees. In 1994, a law was passed that allowed the portability of social security benefits even if one went from the public to the private sector and vice-versa
• Retirement and Pension - There is a Government Service Insurance System, which is a contributory fund towards retirement and pension payments.
• Retirement and Pension - Government employees, on the average, get pensions of up to 20% (or a maximum of P 12,000/$300) of their highest monthly salary received while employed. This, however, requires at least 20 years of service.
• BASIC STATISTICS RELATIVE TO THE CIVIL SERVICE -  Presently, the ratio of government employees to the population is 1:60. While this does not seem bloated in comparison to other countries in the region, the general feeling is that there are too many employees in the central offices and not enough in the local areas where services need to be delivered.
• CIVIL SOCIETY CONFRONTING PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

  • Public opinion polls - published every quarter which, among other things, measure public satisfaction or approval of government policies and government officials. These usually influence the conduct and direction of government plans and programs
• CIVIL SOCIETY CONFRONTING PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

  There is differential perception of public officials, there is a general sense of disaffection for the bureaucracy in general because of the long-held views about red tape, graft and corruption.
• CIVIL SOCIETY CONFRONTING PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

  • Place and role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) - Non-governmental organizations form part of the Philippine governance tradition. Initially, they were mainly charitable institutions connected with the church to help the poor and underprivileged.