In the past ten years, the number of applicants for the Civil Service Examination has dropped by nearly half from 327,608 to 166,057. Last year, more than 11,000 people retired, and there is still a shortage of 882 places for this year's college entrance examination. The public service system faces the challenge of "failure to recruit, fail to retain, and excessive withdrawals." This is not only a warning signal for personnel statistics, but also related to the efficiency of government governance and the quality of public services enjoyed by the people.
In the past ten years, the number of applicants for the Civil Service Examination has dropped from 327,608 to 166,057, a decrease of nearly half. There is still a shortage of 882 admissions for this year's college entrance examination. (File photo, provided by the Department of Examinations and Selection) Faced with brain drain, the government does not have no statistics. According to data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs, 85.3% of the reasons why civil servants resigned from 2010 to 2013 were classified as "personal factors," including those who had other job choices. However, knowing that someone is leaving and finding another job does not mean that he or she truly understands the flow of talent. Did these people go to private enterprises, public institutions, or other public offices? Why did you choose to leave? If the government only stops at classifying causes, the talent retention policy will be like taking the temperature of a patient without further identifying the cause.
"Personal factors" may involve family care, career planning, or better job opportunities. They cannot be blamed entirely on low remuneration and heavy workload; however, possible problems in the system cannot be ignored. Statistics should be the starting point for tracing the causes, not the end point for policy review.
Different grades face different difficulties. From the statistical observation of the reasons for resignation of civil servants, the salary and welfare issues of civil engineering grades deserve attention; for comprehensive administration, judicial administration and other grades, work factors are important reasons other than personal factors. The government should have a deep understanding of the workload, salary gap, promotion opportunities and manpower allocation of each grade, rather than solving all problems with a set of measures.
It is recommended that the government establish a "Public Service Talent Flow Map" and, on the premise of protecting personal information and respecting voluntariness, understand the whereabouts and real reasons of talents through post-resignation tracking, anonymous questionnaires and interviews, and analyze the overall trends by grade, seniority and agency, and publish the overall trends regularly.
If a large number of engineering talents are transferred to the private market with better remuneration, the professional bonus and promotion system should be reviewed; if administrative staff generally report that the business is heavy, the number of positions should be adjusted, processes simplified, and ineffective administrative burdens reduced. More importantly, improvement measures and talent retention results are announced every year so that policies can be tested.
Public service manpower is not a cold number, but the basis for the government to serve the people. The government not only needs to know how many people have left, but also where they have gone, why they left, and how to improve the system. Retaining talents is not to make the reports look good, but to ensure that when the people need the government, there are still people who are willing to serve and have the ability to get things done.
The government has established a "Public Service Talent Flow Map". On the premise of protecting personal information and respecting voluntariness, it uses post-resignation tracking, anonymous questionnaires and interviews to understand the whereabouts and real reasons of talents. It also analyzes by grade, seniority and agency, and publishes the overall trend on a regular basis. (Photography by this newspaper) (The author is the former director of the Legislative Yuan Legislative Affairs Bureau)
