The quality of professional civil servants in the Vietnamese home affairs sector

Abstract

In each country, civil servants are identified as the labor force exercising the state power to manage social development, so their quality is often clearly defined with general requirements in line with the characteristics of the civil service and the specific ones of each industry. In Vietnam, the quality standards for civil servants are clearly defined in the Law on Cadres and Civil Servants in 2008, with general provisions applicable to all of them in the state apparatus. Based on this Law, all industries have their regulations on the quality of civil servants by their characteristics. In this study, we focus on analyzing the quality of professional civil servants in the Home Affairs sector according to its standards based on issued legal regulations, including Political quality, Professional qualifications, Working capacity, and Work results. In this study, a qualitative method is employed to collect secondary documents combined with a quantitative one to conduct a direct survey of 500 managers from the Departments of Home Affairs in 12 provinces representing three provinces of Vietnam.

Qualifications and Practical Capabilities of Local Vietnamese Civil Servants

“…The outcomes of their work performance are among the criteria used to assess a civil servant's quality. It is often regulated by national legislation and cited in numerous research [8]. Vietnamese law also clearly states that work performance outcomes, which are expressed in three ways: ensuring the progress of the assigned work; ensuring the quality of the assigned work performance; and making people satisfied, are among the contents of the annual civil servant evaluation [13].…”

“…Vietnamese law stipulates criteria on civil servants' qualifications and professional skills, standards for their ranks (such as employees, officers, specialists, principal specialists, and senior specialists), and requirements for job positions; Additionally, they need also meet the basic requirements for foreign language proficiency, informatics skills, and state management expertise [10]. While evaluating the quality of civil servants, many researchers also take these standards into consideration [9]. Considering the provisions of current Vietnamese legislation and the indicated earlier research findings, the author outlines the requirements for qualifications and professional skills of communelevel civil servants, including: -QPS1.…”

“…Numerous works in the field of research discuss the practical competencies required of civil servants, such as the ability to effectively and efficiently carry out the assigned tasks [9] or the capacity to perform the tasks well due to possessing ethical qualities and professional qualifications [1]. In the field of management, the competency standards for civil servants per job position are clearly stated in Vietnam's Law on Cadres and Civil Servants [10].…”

Vietnamese Local Civil Servants' Public Service Ethics and Culture

“…One of the criteria for assessing the actual quality of civil servants is their work performance outcomes. This is a matter regulated by national legislation and mentioned in numerous academic studies [10]. In Vietnam, the term "work performance results" is precisely defined in Vietnamese law to mean three things (1) Guaranteeing task execution progress, (2) Assuring task execution effectiveness, and (3) Making people satisfied [12], [13].…”

Commune-level civil servants’ work capability in Vietnam

“…= 0.000 < 0.05 shows that the observed variables have a linear correlation with the representative factor; Total Variance Explained with Cumulative % = 77.952% > 50% shows that 77.952% variation of representative factors is explained by observed variables; All observed variables have Factor Loading > 0.5 show that the observed variables have good statistical significance; The observed variables extracted into 03 factors corresponding to 03 initial factors with Eigenvalues > 1, show that the original research model was kept unchanged, including: 01 dependent variable (WR), 02 independent variables (WI, WC) with a total of 11 observed variables with good statistical significance, multivariable linear regression analysis can be performed to consider the relationship of independent variables (WI, WC) with the dependent variable (WR). Based on the normalized regression coefficient, it can be seen that the correlation of the independent variables and the dependent variables in order are: Ability to work independently (WI) and Ability to work collaboratively (WC) (Allen et al, 2001;Xiao & Xie, 2021;Trung, 2021).…”