Senior civil service posts to be filled by open competition from 20 September

MOGADISHU (SONNA): Senior posts in the Somali civil service are to be filled through open competition, under an instruction issued by Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre directing ministries and government agencies to apply recruitment and appointment based on merit without delay.

The Prime Minister has directed the Civil Service Commission to begin the first phase of the process on 20 September, starting with the directors who run the departments of government institutions. Those posts are to be reassessed on competence, knowledge, experience, leadership and performance.

He described directors general as the backbone of the administration of state institutions, taking a visible part in leadership, in the implementation of policy, in carrying out plans and in the continuity of the work of institutions. The purpose of the exercise, he said, is for the Federal Government to have a professional and permanent administrative leadership with the capacity to implement government policy and turn it into results the Somali public can see.

On vacancies the instruction is explicit. Ministries and agencies are to implement the approved institutional structures, fill director posts through an open competitive process, give every serving civil servant who qualifies an equal opportunity to compete for them, and fill any vacant government post through open competition in accordance with the laws and regulations of the government.

The instruction cites Article 161(1) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Somalia, Article 7 of the Civil Service Law, and the regulations and decisions governing the federal civil service.

What is being changed is the method rather than the principle. Merit-based appointment has been the stated standard for some time, and the Prime Minister said that over the past four years the government has taken steps to strengthen the structure, administration and quality of state institutions, approving laws, policies, regulations and institutional frameworks that govern the management of institutions and of public employees. He said the legal and institutional pillars necessary for reform of the civil service have been put in place.

This instruction turns those instruments on a specific class of post. Directorships in Somali ministries have generally been filled by appointment, and the Prime Minister has himself appointed directors general directly this year, naming three on 6 August under Article 119(d) of the Constitution and a permanent secretary to the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs this month. Moving the same grade to open competition, with serving civil servants entitled to compete for posts on equal terms, is a change in how those offices are reached.

It also gives the Civil Service Commission a defined role and a date. The Commission has the first phase to conduct from 20 September, and the standard it has been given, competence, knowledge, experience, leadership and performance, is one against which its own conduct of the exercise can be measured.

The instruction was issued through the Office of the Prime Minister and communicated by the Government Spokesperson and Director of Communication and Public Relations, Abdinasir Ahmed Bashir. Ministries and agencies have been told to implement it in full and without delay.