HONG KONG 2005

The civil service employs about 4 per cent of Hong Kong's labour force. It provides staff for all government departments and other units of the Administration. At December 31, the total strength of the civil service was 155 500 (excluding about 1 400 judges and judicial officers and ICAC officers).

Overall policy responsibility for the management of the civil service lies with the Civil Service Bureau of the Government Secretariat. The bureau's remit includes making policies on appointments, pay and conditions of service, staff management, manpower planning, training and development, conduct and discipline and use of official languages in the civil service. The bureau is also the focal point for consultation with major staff associations and its General Grades Office manages the 25 300 executive, clerical and secretarial staff. Management of the civil service is governed mainly by three important instruments: the Public Service (Administration) Order, the Public Service (Disciplinary) Regulation, and the Civil Service Regulations, all made with the authority of the Chief Executive.

The Public Service Commission is an independent statutory body set up under the Public Service Commission Ordinance. Its fundamental role is to advise the Chief Executive on appointments, promotions and discipline in the civil service. The Government is also advised on civil service pay and conditions of service by three independent bodies: the Standing Committee on Directorate Salaries and Conditions of Service (directorate officers excluding judicial officers and the disciplined services but including the heads of the disciplined services); the Standing Committee on Disciplined Services Salaries and Conditions of Service (the disciplined services except the heads of disciplined services); and the Standing Commission on Civil Service Salaries and Conditions of Service (all other civil servants).

In accordance with the Basic Law, Principal Officials must be Chinese citizens who are permanent residents of the HKSAR with no right of abode in any foreign country and have ordinarily resided in Hong Kong for a continuous period of not less than 15 years. It is also a Basic Law requirement that new recruits to the civil service on or after July 1, 1997 should normally be permanent residents of the HKSAR, save for those who fall within the exceptions provided in Articles 99 and 101 of the Basic Law.

Subject to the above policy, appointment to the civil service is based on open and fair competition which aims to recruit the best person for the job. Promotion is performance-based and not a reward for long service. As the largest employer in Hong Kong, the Government takes the lead in employing people with a disability to help them integrate into the community and ensure that they are given equal opportunity in recruitment to the Civil Service.

The Government monitors closely the turnover in the civil service for manpower planning purposes. Overall wastage in the civil service remained steady at 4 per cent over the past two years, (2003-04 and 2004-05) following the departure of participants in voluntary retirement schemes. Given the importance of continuity at the management level, the Government has a well-established staff planning mechanism to review the succession planning for senior staff, identify and groom officers with potential for advancement to senior management and develop a pool of talent for senior positions.

The Government values regular communication and consultation with staff. There are four consultative councils at the central level: the Senior Civil Service Council, the Model Scale 1 Staff Consultative Council, the Disciplined Services Consultative Council and the Police Force Council. More than 80 consultative committees operate at the departmental level. The Civil Service Newsletter is published regularly to provide an added link with serving and retired civil servants.

To ensure that Hong Kong continues to maintain a world-class civil service which keeps pace with changes in society, the Government has introduced a number of reforms since it released its public consultation document in 1999. The reforms cover the following five main areas:

The Government has set a target to reduce the civil service establishment to around 160 000 by 2006-07. Through process re-engineering, organisational review and outsourcing, the civil service establishment has been reduced by about 17 per cent from about 198 000 in early 2000 to about 164 100 at the end of December 2005. Two rounds of the Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) were introduced in 2000 and 2003 to enable staff in a total of 232 designated grades with an identified or anticipated staff surplus to retire from the service voluntarily with compensation and pension payments. Some 15 100 applicants have been approved to leave the service voluntarily to bring about long-term savings to the Government. In addition, a general recruitment freeze was imposed from April 1, 2003.

The policy for the civil service pay is to offer sufficient remuneration to attract, retain, and motivate staff of a suitable calibre to provide the public with an effective, efficient and high quality service. In order that civil service pay can be regarded as fair and reasonable by both civil servants who provide the service and the public who foot the bill, the Government adopts the principle that civil service pay should be broadly comparable with private sector pay.

As part of ongoing efforts to modernise the management of the civil service, the Government has embarked on an exercise to develop an improved civil service pay adjustment mechanism for the long-term.

Following an extensive consultation exercise between November 2004 and January 2005, the Government decided in March to conduct a pay-level survey for the civil service. The survey fieldwork is expected to be completed in 2006.

Apart from salaries, civil servants are eligible for fringe benefits depending on their terms of appointment, rank, salary point, length of service, and other eligibility rules. The Government has been taking proactive steps over the years to modernise the provision of fringe benefits to civil servants, including either ceasing or tightening up payment of such allowances to new recruits to reflect present day circumstances. In September 2005, the Civil Service Bureau consulted staff on the proposals arising from the review on fringe-benefit type of allowances to ensure cost effectiveness and efficiency.

The New Entry System for civil service recruits has given the Government increased flexibility in making appointments and a new retirement benefits system, the Civil Service Provident Fund Scheme, provides retirement benefits for officers appointed on New Entry terms.

The Management-initiated Retirement Scheme is also in place to allow the Government, for the purpose of organisational improvement, to initiate early retirement of individual directorate officers to make way for more dynamic and stronger leaders to rise to the top posts.

The Civil Service Training and Development Institute under the Civil Service Bureau formulates training policies and gives support to bureaux/departments in training matters. The institute focuses on four core service areas: senior executive development, national studies programmes, consultancy services in human resource management, and the promotion of a culture of continuous learning.

For senior executive development, a variety of leadership programmes led by world-class professionals and academics are offered to directorate and potential directorate officers. Advisory services on directorate succession planning are provided to departments. Staff exchange programmes with the private sector and municipal and provincial governments of the Mainland (including Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou and Guangdong Province) have been launched to provide officers with wider exposure.

National studies programmes include courses at the National School of Administration, Tsinghua University, Peking University and the China Foreign Affairs University. There are also local programmes on national affairs and the Basic Law for staff at different levels. Apart from local academics, the institute also invites officials and scholars from the Mainland to speak at national affairs seminars.

The institute disseminates best practices in human resource management covering analysis of training needs, learning strategies, development of competency profiles and performance management systems through its advisory services.

To facilitate the pursuit of continuous learning among civil servants, the e-learning portal, Cyber Learning Centre (CLC) Plus, was enhanced in 2005 to provide an expanding pool of e-learning resources in a more user-friendly manner. The number of registered users of the CLC Plus is expected to increase from 45 000 in 2004 to about 55 000 in 2005.

As part of the efforts to promote a culture of continuous learning and self-improvement in the civil service, the institute introduced two new Training Sponsorship Schemes in 2005-06 with the objective of enhancing the qualifications and skills of front-line staff and the management capacities of junior and middle managers. Under the schemes, officers may obtain reimbursement of fees for attending external courses outside office hours.

Staff commitment and contributions are recognised in various forms including honours and awards, commendations and appreciation letters. The Outstanding Service Award Scheme recognises the efforts and achievements of bureaux and departments in the pursuit of service excellence and forms an integral part of the efforts to entrench a customer-oriented approach in the delivery of service.

Since the establishment of the Secretariat on Civil Service Discipline to centrally process disciplinary cases, the Government has introduced further measures to shorten the time taken in processing cases. It has also delegated further authority on discipline matters to heads of departments, in the interest of empowering bureaux and departments to assume greater ownership in human resource management. The mechanism for handling persistent substandard performers was reviewed and further streamlined in 2005 to expedite their compulsory retirement from the service.

As part of its ongoing efforts to embed a culture of probity in the civil service, the Civil Service Bureau, in collaboration with the Independent Commission Against Corruption, has (i) embarked on a Civil Service Integrity Entrenchment Programme under which an outreach team led by directorate officers visited departments to discuss integrity management issues; and (ii) staged a leadership forum, 'Successes through Ethical Governance', in June 2005. The bureau also published an updated version of the 'Civil Servants' Guide to Good Practices'. Meanwhile, continuous efforts are being made to enrich the reference materials available on the electronic 'Resource Centre on Integrity Management' accessible on-line to officers responsible for integrity management in bureaux and departments.