“Proposed New Regulations on Salary and Civil Servant Recruitment by the Ministry of Home Affairs”

Performance-based Compensation Tied to Output Results

The Ministry of Home Affairs is seeking feedback on the draft Law on Official Staff (amended). This bill is expected to be submitted to the National Assembly for consideration at the 10th session, taking place in October.

In the proposal, Minister of Home Affairs Pham Thi Thanh Tra stated that the Law on Official Staff, enacted in 2010 and effective from January 1, 2012, was amended and supplemented in 2019. During its implementation, the Law has provided an important legal basis for managing official staff, building and improving the quality of the team, contributing to enhancing the quality and efficiency of public non-business units.

However, the implementation process has also revealed certain limitations and shortcomings that need to be addressed to suit the new phase, requiring amendments to match the practical situation.

The purpose of formulating and promulgating the Law on Official Staff (amended) is to implement the Politburo’s guidelines on developing public non-business units and address existing shortcomings, difficulties, and obstacles in the implementation process.

The draft is constructed to reduce administrative procedures and overcome the limitations and shortcomings of current legislation, while also meeting the demands of national governance reform and building a professional, responsible, dynamic, and people-serving official staff team.

Based on this, the current amendment continues to promote the management of official staff and performance-based compensation tied to output results. Accordingly, the recruitment, management, evaluation, arrangement, and utilization of official staff must be based on the requirements of the job position and the capacity, results, and efficiency of task performance, aiming to abolish the regulation of salary grading linked to the consideration of promotion in the professional rank of official staff.

The draft also expands provisions on contracting and receiving to facilitate the transition between the private and public sectors, and vice versa, according to job requirements and actual abilities in a competitive, transparent, and equitable environment, innovating the recruitment process for official staff.

The amended Law on Official Staff aims to diversify recruitment methods by adding direct contracting of experts, scientists, and talented individuals as official staff, in addition to the traditional examination and selection methods, to suit the activities of public non-business units.

Another notable point is that the draft also prioritizes the selection of talented individuals, people with merits, and ethnic minorities; applies science and technology in the recruitment process; and integrates data on official staff management in each industry and field.

Official Staff Allowed to Contribute Capital, Establish, and Manage Enterprises

This amendment also aims to expand the rights of official staff by allowing them to sign contracts to perform professional activities at other non-business units, in addition to the public non-business unit they currently work for.

Official staff are also permitted to contribute capital, establish, manage, and work for enterprises founded by the non-business unit they are employed at, or participate in establishing such enterprises to commercialize research results, effectively exploit intellectual property, inventions, and digital technologies created by the organization.

Official staff may also be considered for exclusion, exemption, or reduction of responsibility in cases where they comply with a superior’s decision that is contrary to the law but have reported it.

“The draft Law on Official Staff (amended) focuses on perfecting the human resource management mechanism by putting laborers at the center, creating flexibility in the use of public and private human resources, establishing a mechanism to attract high-quality human resources, reducing administrative procedures, and overcoming the limitations and shortcomings of current legislation,” the proposal by Minister of Home Affairs Pham Thi Thanh Tra stated.

Regarding the financial source for implementation, the Ministry of Home Affairs proposes: The implementation of salary and bonus policies based on job positions for official staff will continue to be based on the current salary scale until the salary reform according to Resolution No. 27-NQ/TW is carried out.