Merging agencies: How to handle 2 people in 1 director position?

Discussing the proposal to merge some departments in the draft Decree regulating the organization of specialized agencies under the People's Committees of provinces and centrally-run cities that the Ministry of Home Affairs is soliciting opinions on, Director of the Department of Home Affairs of Hai Duong Pham Van To said that specialized departments should be regulated uniformly throughout the country.

"If we leave it entirely up to the local authorities to decide on the arrangement and merger, there will be many shortcomings, easily leading to subjectivity and arbitrariness, and it will also be very difficult for the local authorities to implement," he said.

According to Mr. To, for special provinces, there should be regulations on specialized departments. For example, for localities developing tourism, there should be regulations on Department of Tourism; for localities with ethnic minorities, there should be regulations on Ethnic Committee...

Transparency to eliminate "more bosses than soldiers"

Hai Duong once had a story about a department with 44/46 leaders. According to you, what should the draft Decree stipulate to overcome the situation of 'more bosses than soldiers'?

Until now, there has been no regulation on how many employees there is for one leader, so local people think that the function and duty of the department's specialized departments is to direct the grassroots level, so there must be a position to be able to do the job. That is why the appointment is made without basis.

In my opinion, there should be a strict regulation on how many deputies there are for each employee in a department. If there are 7 employees or more, then there should be a regulation on how many deputies there are. If there are 7 employees or less, then there should be a clear regulation on whether there are 2 or 1 deputies.

With clear and transparent regulations, there is no way that the department will have more leaders than employees. In fact, everyone sees that there are too many leaders but cannot criticize them. But once there are strict and transparent regulations, power can be controlled better.

When this Decree is issued, a series of departments will be reorganized and merged, the number of departments will be reduced and there will certainly be a surplus of deputy positions. How should this problem be solved?

According to the Central regulations, localities are allowed to reserve a maximum number of deputy positions for 3 years for reorganization. During those 3 years, there are several policies that need to be implemented. One is to implement those who wish to retire according to Decree 108 on streamlining the payroll, then they will be entitled to that policy.

Second, during those 3 years, the agencies in charge of organization and personnel are responsible for arranging surplus staff into suitable positions. Along with that, there is a program to restructure civil servants and public employees to arrange the surplus deputy positions.

I think that in 3 years of implementing policies, transferring and rearranging leaders and deputy managers will also be convenient for localities to do.

Competitive exam for the position of department director

Some people think that when merging 2 offices into 1, there will be 2 directors but only 1 position. So should there be a competitive exam?

In my opinion, we should apply a recruitment mechanism. Then there will be a council to review the capacity of those two directors.

This is no longer a matter of planning because both people are already directors, so it is only necessary to consider the process, capacity, ability to complete the tasks of the term as director of the department as well as the ability to present their action program if they are made director of the department after the merger. Combining these two things to consider appointing a new director ensures the ability to better manage the new unit.

When merging, the most difficult thing is to arrange the staff of department-level leaders. Secondly, if the specialized departments have to be merged, even the number of department heads will be redundant. There will be departments with overlapping functions and tasks such as the office and the financial planning department will be merged into one. How will the number of department heads and deputy department heads be calculated?

The problem is how to propagate, motivate, and explain so that cadres and civil servants understand and communicate the Party and State's policy of restructuring the cadre, civil servant, and public employee team and streamlining the apparatus to operate effectively and efficiently.