Bureaucratic Capacity
and Civil Service Reforms in Macau
Recently, the Macau government has submitted a bill to the Legislative Assembly to improve the civil service system. Entitled “Civil Service Ranking and Establishment System,” the bill seeks to make a number of recommended changes so that the overall bureaucratic capacity of Macau can be enhanced. Some foreign business people who have invested in Macau’s booming casino industry have expressed their concern about whether the territory’s bureaucracy can really cope with the rapidly changing socio-economic transformations. They question specifically whether bureacratic capacity in Macau can meet the various challenges, both internal and external. Objectively speaking, the bill that seeks to improve the civil service system is coincidentally addressing their concerns and intentionally preparing for a strong government after the Edmund Ho era beyond mid-2009.
First and foremost, the bill applies to all civil servants, including those within the estbablishment and others who are on individual labor contractual terms. However, in order to stablize the contractual staff morale, the bill mentions that when the law on civil service system is approved by the legislature, the current contractual arrangements between the government and the individual labor contractual staff would continue. But both sides will be able to modify their contractual content within 180 days after the formal implementation of the law. In a sense, the bill seeks to provide a transitional period for both the government and its contractual staff to deal with the systemic reforms.
Second, the bill appropriately seeks to repeal a number of ranks so as to streamline the civl service system. Some ranks are suggested to be merged, while others will be eliminated. Some rankings entail other reforms such as an adjustment in their entry educational requirements and starting salaries. Specifically, an individual’s working experience rather than his or her training before joining the public sector will be counted. The reforms are long overdue, because many rankings and entry requirements were perhaps the legacies of the Macau civil service system before December 20, 1999. The delineation of clear educational requirements will improve the professional image of the entire bureaucracy.
Third, the bill tries to establish internal and external recruiment mechanisms. Internally, all civil servants working within the government will be eligible for such advertised positions. Externally, all permanent residents of Macau will be eligible for applying for the advertised posts. In the past, some citizens complained that the recruitment of Macau civil service was confusing and not transparent. There were also serious accusations regarding nepotism and patron-client networks in the civil service under the Portuguese administration. The charges of nepotism and patron-clientelism have occasionally surfaced in post-1999 Macau. The Ao Man Long scandal, according to some government critics, exposed the serious problem of patron-clientelism in his department, where his subordinates appeared to be afraid of speaking out against his arbitrary behavior and where the performance appraisal of Ao himself was problematic. The current civil service reform, if implemented, will hopefully address the deep-rooted problem of the lack of transparency in the recruitment process and the absence of rigorous criteria of performance appraisal.
Fourth, the bill accurately encourages on-the-job training of civil servants by intergrating it into the promotion criteria. A few civil servants complained to the author that although they worked hard to engage in part-time studies, the superiors did not take into account their diligent study in the annual performance appraisal exercise. This was definitely unsatisfactory for a bureacracy that is expected to meet the rapidly changing socio-economic and political circumstances. The proposed change in the bill’s content does address the issue of on-the-job training and study. Yet, it remains to be seen whether all departmental superiors will really take into consideration seriously their subordinates’ extra efforts at studying various subjects, such as public policy, public administration, crisis management, media relations, and other areas related to their work. Ideally, the departmental superiors themselves have to be strongly encouraged, or even required, to attend on-the-job training courses so that the educational levels of all civil servants will be upgraded. The bill does not really apply to the security personnel, whose reform was already covered in Law No. 2/2008. However, a careful study of the educational level of civil servants in Macau shows that the security forces particularly need more
rigorous on-the-job training because their educational level is on average lower than other sectors of the civil service.
Fifth, in order to boost the morale of civil servants, the rankings of a particular grade are increased so that a young civil servant who reaches the top rank would not lack the incentive and motivation to work harder. Vertically, an additional rank is added to a certain grade. Horizontally, three to five new ranks are created. Overall, increasing the intra-departmental rankings will create a clear career path for those civil servants who just join a particular department, for they will attempt to climb up the career ladder in a longer time span. In other words, the prospects of individual civil servants will look more promising in the future.
Sixth, the bill suggests that those civil servants who reach the top rank of their grade and whose performance reach the “satisfactory” level will be able to straddle into the newly created rank. This proposal does improve the morale of those civil servants who reach the top of their departmental rankings and who have performed impressively. Nevertheless, it is unclear whether all departmental superiors will perhaps have internal guidelines on the percentage of subordinates whose performance is ranked as “satisfactory”or above. Hypothetically, some government department heads may make their department look “good” by ranking the performance of subordinates much higher than the real situation. For instance, the percentage of those who acquire “good” or above may be higher so that both the department and the individual staff may look “satisfactory” in terms of their performance. In Macau, the standardization of the criteria of performance appraisal, especially the percentage of those civil servants whose performance is ranked as “excellent” and “satisfactory” may have to be fixed so that all departments will be able to follow clear guidelines and yardsticks for measurement.
Another important criterion of performance appraisal is to stress the element of integrity. If an individual civil servant is suspected of taking bribes, or playing patron-client relations, his or her integrity can be questioned during the annual performance appraisal exercise. Integrating the ingredient of anti-corruption or clean government into the psyche of every civil servant will arguably be necessary to maintain the overall effective and honest administration of Macau.
Seventh, the bill proposes that a centralized government department should be entrusted with the task of recruitment and promotion. This suggestion should have been made long ago. Macau’s civil service has a long-standing tradition of decentralization of recruitment and promotion procedures, making the departments much stronger than what conventional wisdom may have assumed. Departmentalism, empire-building and bureaucratic politics were often the outcomes of such decentralization of recruitment and promotion. By centralizing the procedures of recruitmen and promotion, the Macau governmental capacity will be hopefully enhanced to a considerable extent.
When the Macau govenment introduced the civil service provident fund system, the idea sparked heated debate in the society. Some civil servants expressed their concern about whether the government tried to minimize its responsiblity and obligations to them. However, after the implementation of the civil service provident fund system in 2007, there were 9,363 civil servants joining the scheme (figures in June 2008). Since about 43 percent of the total number of civil servants has been participating in the scheme, it appears that the pension reform has increasingly gained the support of its own staff members.
When the bill on civil service establishment system was discussed in the legislature, another bill was also
introduced to improve the accountability of leading and managerial staff. The bill on the accountabilty of leading and managerial staff suggests that civil servants who leave the government and who wish to join the private sector will need at least six months of “cooling period.” Some legislators questioned whether six months would really be sufficient, while others criticized the bill as lacking accountability. Given the legacy of the Ao Man Long scandal, it takes time for a trustful relationship between the Macau government and the society, including the legislators, to be forged. Arguably, the crux of the problem of Macau’s bureacracy is how to improve the performance appraisal system rigorously. If performance appraisal of all Macau civil servants, including the leading and managerial staff, is rigorous, standardized and under the constant internal checks from the Audit Commissioner and the Commission Against Corruption, the prospects of Macau’s civil service reforms will remain cautiously optimistic.
In the process of civil service reform, the Macau government has also tried to implement the concept of e-Government. Many government departments have become apparently more transparent than ever before, putting up their websites filled with current news, published documents, internal structure, and email and address contacts for citizens. Nevertheless, a careful study of some departmental websites shows two main problems. First, the lack of responsiveness from some agencies can be felt easily. The author emailed two departments twice and made enquiries, including the Department of Administrative and Public Service and the Macau Foundation, but there were no reply. Interestingly, the Prison Department (whose website is simple and provides the basic information) and the Commission Against Corruption (whose website is perhaps a model for all other government departments as it is very updated) were most responsive to the author’s enquiries. Indeed, the author’s experience cannot be generalized at all. It did demonstrate the variations of governmental agencies’ responsiveness to email enquiries.
Although responsiveness to emails from citizens and outsiders must vary across different departments and agencies, a comprehensive civil service reform should ideally include a performance pledge for all government departments and agencies to respond to the enquiries of citizens and outsiders within a specified timeframe. Otherwise e-Government cannot be deeply entrenched into the Macao political system, which is a small one but which arguably necessitates swift responsiveness on the part of all government departments and agencies.
The second problem of e-Government in Macau is that whenever government officials made important annoucement in public, such as a bill that is submitted to the legislature for deliberation, the government website does not have a guide to the readers and researchers on how such bill can be located. The exceptions are the Chief Executive’s annual address and budgets, which are quickly shown on the government website for easy downloading and reading. Still, there should ideally be a very updated section in the Macau government’s website about all the immediate annoucements and how citizens can locate the relevant bill, government document and law. The current website of the Macau government can perhaps be improved further so that the gap between the government and citizens in the cyberspace will be significantly narrowed.
In short, the Macau government takes appropriate measures to reform the exixting civil service rankings and establishment system. This well-intended reform should be strongly supported because it will enhance bureacratic capacity significantly. Nevertheless, other areas of reforms will need to be deepened, especially the integration of further training and study of civil servants into the annual performance appraisal mechanism, the standaridization of performance assessment criteria, the increase in departmental responsiveness to emails, and the need to improve the e-governmental linkage with citizens in the cyberspace.
Sonny Lo is an Associate Professor in Political Science at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. His forthcoming book in September 2008 will be The Politics of Cross-Border Crime in Greater China: Case Studies of Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao (M. E. Sharpe, September 2008).