Thank you very much.
During the visit of the president of the Public Service Commission to Mongolia, and also during our prime minister's official visit to Canada, we discussed the main challenges we're facing in the public sector of Mongolia.
As the chairman of the Civil Service Council of Mongolia mentioned in the video, of course the Canadian public sector has much more experience than us. It has 100 years of experience.
There are six main challenges we're facing right now in our public sector that should be addressed in the near future.
One of them is that the law for the civil service stipulated that there be fairness, accountability, and independence in public service appointments. However, the tendency of public service appointments to be manipulated by the political interests still remains quite dominant. We still have certain political interests being manipulated into these public service appointments.
The second one is that there is a need to renew and change the current classification of the public service, which includes civil servants, from the lowest administrative unit up to the highest level, comprised of the members of our parliament. I'd like to explain something about the second point, about challenges.
[Witness continues in English]
Mongolia is only a very small country between Russia and China. Mongolia has only 2.7 million people...[Inaudible--Editor].
[Witness continues in Mongolian with interpretation]
Compared to our population, which is quite small at 2.7 million, the number of public servants has reached 120,000. This is due to the lack of accurate classification, because right now in our country for those who we call “public servants”, it means everybody that is serving the government, from police to doctors. That's why our classifications are broad. But the public service officers who work in the 13 ministries of the Government of Mongolia number only around 40,000.
So we obviously need the experience of foreign countries, especially the Canadian experience and model, for the classification of public service officials.
The third challenge we are facing is that there's a need to improve the appointment system: recruitment regulations for public servants at all levels, criteria for candidates, and the methods of testing. The current regulations are too vague and the method of the selection process does not meet the requirements.
The fourth challenge is that although the initial measures have been taken toward establishing common standards for developing and planning policy, implementing, and reporting in the civil service, the final decision has not been made. The decision on establishing the standards will significantly contribute to the civil service formation.
The fifth point is that the Civil Service Council has developed the code of conduct for the administrative officials of the government and the government approved it on November 10, 2010. The implementation of that regulation will start soon. There is a need to study the experience and methods from other countries on the code of conduct as well.
The sixth point is that currently there is no training and no capacity-building system in the public service that can provide the minimum level of public servant competence. The management academy, which works under the government, cannot provide the training for civil servants as they offer only general management courses.