The Development of an Electronic Mechanism to Ensure Transparency of Public Servants Recruitment (TN0035)

The development of an electronic mechanism to ensure transparency of Public Servants recruitment

15. Electronic mechanism to ensure transparency of Public Servants recruitment

Commitment Text:

This commitment aims to facilitate access to information for all job seekers especially job opportunities in public sector. It will foster the principles of transparency and equal opportunity to ensure that the most capable person is selected for a position on the basis of merit and refers to the right of every individual to be given fully fair consideration for any job in public sector for which they are qualified and skilled.

The goal of this commitment is also to reduce the risk of corruption and nepotism, as the lack of transparency could give the opportunity to receive bribes or enable certain people to benefit from the opportunities offered in this area.

Responsible institution: General directorate, Ministry of Vocational Training and Employment

Supporting institution(s): None

Start date: June 2016        End date: July 2018

Context and Objectives

Jobs in the Tunisian public sector are in high demand because they offer stability and good social security. Prior to 2011, the public servant recruitment process was marred by nepotism and corruption. [44] The revolution revealed great public discontent with corruption in the public sector and demanded more transparency in the announcement and publication of the results in favor of competitiveness and equity.

With this commitment, the Ministry of Vocational Training has planned to create a website that will aggregate all the job openings in the public sector. This commitment is highly specific and is relevant to the OGP value of access to information.

If fully implemented this commitment would have a minor potential impact in bringing transparency to the recruitment process in the public sector. The website was under development prior to the start of the action plan ^[45] and was supposed to be launched at the end of 2015. The commitment would see it become operational as a platform that offers the possibility of publishing offers in the public sector, from ministries, public institutions and public enterprises.

Completion

The website for positions opening in the public sector was launched in summer 2016 at https://www.concours.gov.tn/. The website lists active job openings with their respective deadlines, qualifications, required paperwork for submission and status of the results announcements.

Early results

The website lists some job offers for public servants. However, despite a decree issued by the Prime Minister in August 2016 requesting all public administration bodies to collaborate and publish their vacancies on the centralized portal, the researcher found that not all ongoing job offers were listed. For example, the High Authority for Audiovisual Communication issued a call for applications to recruit a front desk agent. This should have been published on the website.

Moreover, due to the absence of internet certification, the website appears to be “unsafe” in most of internet navigators. Search engine optimization is also an issue as the website does not appear in search engines.

Next Steps

The IRM researcher recommends the following:

• The government commit to passing a decree reminding and obliging all public administration bodies to publish their job offers on this website.

• Certification for the website must be provided to avoid technical hurdles in accessing the website.
• The SEO of the website needs to be optimized. A link to it should be provided on every public administration website.

• Further development should make online applications possible via the website.

15. The Development of an electronic mechanism to ensure the transparency of Public Servants recruitment

Commitment Text:

This commitment aims to facilitate access to information for all job seekers especially job opportunities in public sector. It will foster the principles of transparency and equal opportunity to ensure that the most capable person is selected for a position on the basis of merit and refers to the right of every individual to be given fully fair consideration for any job in public sector for which they are qualified and skilled.

The goal of this commitment is also to reduce the risk of corruption and nepotism, as the lack of transparency could give the opportunity to receive bribes or enable certain people to benefit from the opportunities offered in this area.

Milestones:

The development of electronic mechanisms for the dissemination of information about job opportunities carried out by ministries, public institutions and public enterprises, particularly those exceptional Mandates by contract.

Responsible institution: General directorate, Ministry of Vocational Training and Employment

Start date: June 2016 End date: July 2018

Editorial Note: This is an abbreviated version of the commitment text. For the full commitment text from the Tunisia National Action Plan, see here.

Commitment Aim:

This commitment aimed to improve transparency in the recruitment of civil servants, contractors, and permanent officials. Through this commitment, the Ministry of Vocational Training has planned to create a website that will aggregate all job openings in the public sector. Before the implementation of this commitment, announcements were published in different governmental online portals, but they were never aggregated in one publicly owned/managed portal.

Status

Midterm: Complete

The commitment was completely implemented in summer 2016. The Ministry of Vocational Training held a press conference [64] to present the website. [65] However, due to the absence of internet certification, the website appears to be “unsafe” in most of internet navigators. Search engine optimization is also an issue as the website does not appear in search engines.

End of term update

When checked at the end-of-term assessment, the website included announcements of public servant job openings. However, when checked further, the IRM researcher found that some announcements were available in paper format but not on the website. This means that the website is not yet the one-stop shop that it was designed to be.

Did It Open Government?

Access to Information: Marginal

The completion of this commitment would provide the government with a tool to reduce perceptions of corruption in the government recruitment process and would enhance the transparency. Before the implementation of this commitment, Tunisian citizens had to apply for government posts using traditional methods, such as visiting government offices or checking the job announcements in major newspapers.

Although the aggregation of public announcements for recruitment of public servants is important, it is not applied systematically by all government agencies, meaning not all agencies display vacant posts on the website.

Carried Forward?

This commitment was not carried forward.