On " Latent Qualities " And The Civil Service System

"Good administration starts with good people. " By whom a nation is administered determines not only the image of the ruling party and the administration among people, but also whether we can build an open, democratic, efficient and clean government, as well as whether all endeavors of the party and of the nation will succeed or not. Recruitment is the core content and the first component of the civil service system in China. The study of civil servants' competence in this area is therefore of practical significance for both the improvement of our civil service system and the current social political life.China is now in an era of profound changes in people' s minds and fast socio-economic development. Against this backdrop, people have higher and higher expectation on government' s capability to coordinate social reforms and to deliver effective public services. The competence of civil servants has a direct bearing on the level of government administration and "effectiveness" of public service delivery, as they are the direct carriers of administration efficiency and public service provision. Currently, the reform of government personnel system is not completed, and the conventional civil service system is yet an "open system" for the general public. Public service delivery remains poor in terms of efficiency. The progressive administrative reform in recent years has generated some initial improvement in the civil service system. However, the focus of such reform generally lies on the "hardware" (eg: institution and mandates) but deals little with the "software" (eg: competence of civil servants, better public service delivery). Specifically in the recruitment of civil servants, the assessment of candidates' competence is problematic in the evaluation system, items methods of assessment, constituting a bottleneck, to some extent, to the improvement of overall competence of civil service.Modern management sciences have created a set of well-developed theories on human resources. Specifically in the human resources development for public administration, there have been lots of studies, generating many effective practices. On the basis of a comparison of the evolution of Chinese and western recruitment of civil servants (officials), this paper studies the assessment of candidates' competence. It consists of three parts.Firstly, after an analysis of the development, mechanism and related concepts of civil servant recruitment in China, and with reference to the theoretical findings of modern western governments in enhancing civil service competence, this paper puts forward the concept of "implicit competence" of civil servant, based on the Competency Theory of modern management.Secondly, this paper analyzes the philosophy of assessing "implicit competence" and weak points in institutional arrangement, technical support and implementation of such assessment, and proposes a model for "implicit competence" assessment.Thirdly, this paper analyzes the procedures of current civil servant recruitment and proposes targeted countermeasures for existing problems, such as further improvement of the legal system, scientific and rational institutional arrangement, diversified methods of assessment, increased research investment and greater efforts in supervision, with an aim to contributing to the reform of civil servant recruitment system of China.