There needs to be a unified national question bank for assessing the quality of civil servant input.

The entrance examination of civil servants ensures the corresponding capacity and quality and ensures publicity, fairness and transparency. Illustrative photo

The Ministry of Home Affairs said that in the implementation of the civil servant recruitment process, up to now, the input quality assessment activities have mainly been carried out by ministries, branches and localities on the basis of evaluating records, diplomas and certificates, without any testing or screening of candidates before assessing professional competence. The test contents on general knowledge, foreign languages ​​and information technology are assessed at the same time as the test contents on professional knowledge and skills, so there is a difference in the capacity of candidates.

After Decree No. 161/2018/ND-CP was replaced by Decree No. 138/2020/ND-CP, the implementation of round 1 of the civil servant recruitment exam was implemented by ministries, branches and localities. The regulations on the implementation of round 1 of the civil servant recruitment exam stipulated in Decree No. 138/2020/ND-CP are similar to those in Decree No. 161/2018/ND-CP. The implementation of round 1 of the civil servant recruitment exam has achieved certain results.

Specifically, round 1 contributes to screening candidates, selecting candidates with good knowledge to participate in round 2 of the civil servant recruitment exam; the content of round 1 has been initially innovated to be more suitable to reality; the implementation process of round 1 of the exam expands the participation of training, fostering and scientific research establishments instead of only the participation of recruitment agencies, contributing to improving the quality and efficiency in testing and evaluating candidates' capacity.

In addition to the initial results achieved, the implementation of round 1 also revealed some limitations such as: The questions on General Knowledge mainly focused on assessing understanding of laws related to cadres, civil servants, responsibilities and tasks. Regarding foreign languages, only general reading and comprehension skills were assessed, but there was a lack of content assessing the use of foreign languages ​​in the public service environment; in the organization of the round 1 recruitment exam, the content of the recruitment exam and the way of making exam questions were not suitable; there was a lack of initiative in building a question bank for round 1; compliance with regulations on recruitment of civil servants in some ministries, branches and localities was not complete, the quality was not high, not uniform, and there were still violations in some places...

Therefore, the requirement to innovate the civil servant recruitment model, clarify regulations on quality assessment of civil servant input; to have a question bank for all ministries, branches and localities to ensure consistency in content, knowledge, and difficulty level of questions, applicable to all civil servant candidates nationwide, is extremely necessary at the present stage.

Having a unified national assessment question bank will increase objectivity in assessment exams, fully comply with legal regulations, ensure the input assessment of civil servants' capacity and qualities, and ensure publicity, fairness and transparency.