What positions do senior specialists and senior specialists need?

How many senior and senior specialists does each agency need? This is a very difficult question for heads of agencies, units, ministries and branches from the central to local levels to answer. Because the number of people working in the political system in our country for many years has been created by “staffing quotas”.

The downside of “staff quotas” is “recruiting people first, then arranging jobs”. This approach goes against the science of organizational structure and personnel arrangement. But it has existed for a long time because “many people benefit”, while the State and the people suffer; the apparatus is increasingly bloated; the budget spends thousands of billions each year on salaries and regular expenses… but work efficiency is not high.

Similarly, the number of senior specialists, chief specialists and equivalents is also arranged according to annual "quotas", based on the individual needs of "qualified" people without considering the job position needs of the entire apparatus.

It is difficult to find exact figures, but certainly the number of senior experts, chief experts and equivalents in our country's political system is increasing.

The question is: After each exam to become a senior specialist, a senior specialist and equivalent, has the management level and professional level of this team really increased? Although there has not been any systematic, objective investigation published to have accurate assessment results, people and businesses can clearly see it.

For example, the quality of legal documents in each field of State management has not been improved. Every year, there are thousands of documents with errors in both content and authority, and in both form and issuance procedure, so there has been a situation of "documents in heaven, life on earth".

So, among those poor quality documents, how many senior experts and key experts participated in drafting, advising or signing to issue?

Another sensitive area is administrative reform, although it has been noted to have made much progress compared to before, according to the "Provincial Competitiveness Index Survey Report" of VCCI in 2018, 58.2% of enterprises still said that there was harassment when local government officials handled procedures; 54.8% said that they had to pay "grease money".

So, with this sad number, what percentage of senior experts and key experts participate directly or indirectly in the implementation?

From that logic, the question arises: what positions in an agency are senior specialists, principal specialists and equivalent really needed? And how many people is enough for each agency? Because in reality, many current positions in the political system do not require senior specialists and principal specialists. That means it is okay if there are none.

It must be frankly admitted that many people who try to pass the exam to become senior specialists, chief specialists and equivalent have two main reasons: One is to “jump” to a higher salary level; two is the mentality of wanting to be more “prestigious” when carrying this title. In reality, whether they have really improved their qualifications or not, whether they have worked with better quality than before or not is very difficult to measure.

Therefore, the promotion of senior experts, senior experts and equivalent in our country's political system needs to be summarized and evaluated scientifically and accurately for appropriate adjustments. When necessary, it should be abolished to arrange salaries according to job position and efficiency and quality of work in the coming time.