Research on Quality of Vietnamese Civil Servants

Abstract

Civil servants are those who perform public duties, serve the state and serve the people, so the quality of civil servants is always of interest to countries and is a decisive factor in the quality, efficiency and prestige of government agencies. In each country, the law clearly stipulates the quality standards of civil servants, often including the contents of professional qualifications, working capacity, and service attitude. In which, professional qualifications are easily identifiable standards demonstrated through graduation certificates of the training level corresponding to the recruited civil servant rank; but working capacity and service attitude are two contents that need to go through the practical working process to be able to identify accurately and objectively when assessing the quality of civil servants. Therefore, in this study, the author mentions working capacity and service attitude as both constituent contents and factors affecting the quality of civil servants. The author built a theoretical research model consisting of three scales: "Working capacity", "Service attitude", "Civil servant quality" and conducted a survey of 450 leaders of commune-level government agencies of 3 provinces representing 3 regions of Vietnam: Cao Bang province (North), Ha Tinh province (Central), Bac Lieu province (South). The survey aims to collect data for empirical research on the quality of local civil servants at the commune level in Vietnam. The research results show that local leaders underestimate the working capacity of civil servants, and have limited knowledge and digital skills. From the results of this research, the author implies the content of policy adjustments to improve the quality of local civil servants in Vietnam to meet the requirements of building e-government and digital government.