ENG-2004 — Page 47

Constitution and Administration | 21

achievement of bureaux and departments and their staff in providing quality customer service to the public and to further promote a customer-focused culture in the Civil Service.

Civil Service Reform

As a result of a widely consulted review in 1999, major reforms in the succeeding years have greatly enhanced the performance and efficiency of the Civil Service to meet the demands of a changing society. The reforms covered four main

areas:

1. Entry and Exit

A new entry system and terms of appointment for new recruits to the Civil Service introduced in June 2000 have increased the flexibility of the appointment system in the Government. To complement, a new retirement benefits system in the form of a provident fund scheme is provided for new recruits.

The Government set a target to reduce the civil service establishment to around 160 000 by 2006-07. Two rounds of the Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) were introduced in 2002 and 2003 respectively to enable staff in a total of 232 designated grades with an identified or anticipated staff surplus to retire from the service voluntarily with compensation and pension payments. Some 15 100 applicants have been approved to leave the service voluntarily to bring about long-term savings to the Government. In addition, a general recruitment freeze was imposed from April 1, 2003.

A Management-Initiated Retirement Scheme was also introduced for the retirement of directorate civil servants on permanent and pensionable terms.

2.

Remuneration

The current pay policy for the Civil Service is to offer sufficient remuneration to attract, retain, and motivate staff of a suitable calibre to provide the public with an effective, efficient and high quality service. Such remuneration should be regarded as fair and reasonable by both civil servants who provide the service and the public who foot the bill. Within these parameters, broad comparability with the private sector is an important factor in setting civil service pay.

As part of ongoing efforts to modernise the management of the Civil Service and to address public comments on the existing civil service pay adjustment mechanism, the Government has embarked on an exercise to develop an improved pay adjustment mechanism for long-term adoption in the service. The objective of the exercise is to put in place an improved mechanism which reflects the civil service pay policy and upholds the principle of maintaining broad comparability between civil service pay and private sector pay.

To take the exercise forward, a steering committee and a consultative group were established to provide professional input and staff views. This resulted in the Civil Service Bureau issuing a consultation paper in November 2004 on proposals relating to the methodology of a pay level survey for the civil service and the general