Paper to be presented in the 17th NISPAcee Annual Conference
Working Group III on Training and Qualification in the Civil Service.
Title:
OCCUPATIONAL STANDARDS IN CIVIL SERVICE
IN LINE WITH EUROPEAN QUALIFICATIONS FRAMEWORK
- A SOLUTION FOR ROMANIA
Authors:
Georgeta GHETE –DANAU
Director
Regional Centre for Continuing Training for Local Public Administration Bucharest, Romania
Virgil PAMFIL
Deputy Director
Regional Centre for Continuing Training for Local Public Administration Bucharest, Romania
Paper content:
1. OCCUPATIONAL STANDARDS – THE BASICS
As a definition the Occupational Standards are the documents that specify what a person must know and what must be able to do in order to be considered competent in his/her workplace. They are Standards because they define a general accepted quality benchmarking that considers all the specific requirements for a workplace. They are Occupational because they provide clear descriptions on the roles and specific tasks required by an occupation.
In general terms the Occupational Standards are based on a strong academic foundation (reading, numeric, and communication skills) supplemented by general workplace readiness skills and broad skills needed for specific industries.
Occupational Standards are focused on identification of a package of competencies that a job holder must acquire to provide effective work. These competencies are expressed in terms of needed skills, knowledge and behaviors to achieve successful results on the workplace.
Once reached the consensus on the key competencies related to each occupation they are used as benchmarking tools to assess the performance of broad range of workers to match the requirements of a global labor market. This enables a broad mobility of respective workers at national and international level, depending on the recognition and validity of Occupational Standards among various countries.
The most widely used benchmark for workplace readiness skills consider the following key issues:
· Productive use of resources
· Interpersonal skills (necessary for effective teamwork and interaction with clients)
· Information management (organizing information for informed decision-making)
· Systems skills (understanding systems to improve their design for improved performance)
· Technology skills (selecting technology and applying it)
· Basic skills (reading, writing, arithmetic and mathematics, speaking and listening)
· Thinking skills (thinking creatively, making decisions, solving problems, seeing things in the mind's eye, knowing how to learn and reasoning) (SCANS, June 1991).
More and more countries have begun to integrate cross-disciplinary skills, into academic core curriculum to foster the integration of academic and occupational curricula, to encourage critical thinking and reasoning skills and to make standards-based reform efforts more coherent by linking the different disciplines. The available occupational standards are needed to build bridges between secondary and postsecondary institutions and in designing coherent programs of stud but still they do not cover a yet large number of career clusters. These standards form a communication link between the requirements of the workplace and providers of education and training, and give context for developing and assessing the value of work-based learning experiences for students.
2. OCCUPATIONAL STANDARDS – THE ROMANIAN BACKGROUND
Romania adopted the use of Occupational Standards in 1990 as a cooperation mechanism between the education providers and employers with the purpose for the education and training to match the labor market requirements.
In 1994 the Romania Council for Occupational Standards and Assessment (COSA) was established. It developed and enforced the Methodological framework for drafting, validation and approval of Occupational Standards in accordance with the European requirements. On the basis of this methodological framework occupational standards on a large range of fields of activity have been developed to cope with the labor market requirements.
In 2003 the National Council of Adult Education (CNFPA) undertook COSA’s tasks and in accordance with the Tri-Party Agreement (Government/Labor Unions/Patronage) that was signed in 2005 it took over the role of National Qualification Authority (NQA).
According to the Romanian law the occupational standards may be drafted by the professional associations, patronage or labor organization, companies and training providers in accordance with CNFPA methodology. The verification and the approval of occupational standards are accomplished only by specific accredited organizations in the field (Sectorial Committees and Line Ministries).
The decision to adopt the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) in Romania is a challenge to revise the whole qualifications methodological framework that is currently in place in order to cope with the life long learning principles and to support the professional development of each person starting with vocational education and going to continuing training.
The awareness of the use of having available benchmarking tools to assess professional competencies and to guide development of a broad range of professional education is continuously raining in Romania. The need of mobility of workers in a global labor market makes a top priority for the Government in strengthening the institutional capacities of National Qualification Authority – the body in charge with developing of occupational standards in Romania.
3. OCCUPATIONAL STANDARDS - THE USE FOR CIVIL SERVICE
The Civil Service is one of the country's largest employers, employing about two hundreds thousands people all over Romania. Jobs are advertised in the local and nationalpress and on public administration bodies’ websites.
There is a clear promotion structure, which is linked to the appraisal system. Most people tend to stay in the department they were recruited into, but anyone could apply for jobs in other departments or public bodies. The main goal of public governments is to provide customer-focused services. Therefore, they are seeking for best candidates to join the Civil Service, people who can be flexible, adaptable, fast moving and skilful, people who can take pride in their work, are passionate about improving and who will provide a high level of professionalism.
Each governmental agency organizes its own recruitment and sets its own entry requirements. The selection procedure is accomplished according to the law and considers the formal requirements stated in the Status of Civil Servants. It consists of various stages which might include:
· filling in an application form based on candidate’s skills and work experience
· taking a written test to check your level of professional knowledge
· passing more selection tests and an interview.
The Civil Service is a diverse organization and the professional competencies for every post considered as a range of required knowledge, skills and behaviors is quite broad. To aid transferability of qualifications both within the Civil Service and across the wider economy at European level, the Romanian Government seeks to align to the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) by promoting the development of Occupational Standards under the authority of National Council of Adult Education and by establishing the National Authority for Qualifications. The Central Agency in charge with selection and promotion of Civil Servants in Romania is the National Agency of Civil Servants. The joint interest for these Romanian Authorities is to develop a national qualifications framework to accredit qualifications at appropriate levels to meet the needs of Public Agencies.
The solution is the development of occupational standards and provision of learning support at work together with regularly review of the suitability and availability of qualifications in order to ensure that the needs of learners, employers and the economy are met.
Occupational standards are agreed definition and benchmark of knowledge, skills and competences needed to do a particular job. The occupational standard is to be completed for recruitment, performance management and role definition purposes. It should reflect role demands and required behavior at proficient level.
Job-specific professional skills are related to the work. Everyone in the Civil Service requires some professional skills to do their job, whether they work in policy development, operational delivery or corporate services, or provide expert advice. Therefore, development of occupational standards for Civil Service implies the identification for each key position of the following information:
· Purpose - Describing why the role exists and a summary of what it delivers. The summary should be specific to the role and not a general statement which might apply to a number of roles in the department.
· Key accountabilities - A specific area of the role that requires the role holder to be responsible for taking decisions, delivering results or carrying out a significant amount of activity. Together the accountabilities define the authority, remit and scope of the role, and cover all the major outputs/results expected of the role.
· Performance indicators - Qualitative performance criteria for each accountability as measures of the key outputs. Basis for performance planning and agreement within the performance management system.
· Job requirements - Specification as the requirements for the role (knowledge, skills, experience).
The above approach has been used in developing 40 occupational standards for selected civil service positions for the National Agency of Civil Servants of Romania in 2007.
Considering the diversity of tasks that could be assigned to the most positions in Civil Service it is difficult to address them as common occupations with specific and general competencies needed for job holder, but as generic competencies to deal with planning, managing information, processes and people, controlling, budgeting, etc. In this respect a suitable approach to develop the competency framework has to be promoted.
There are specific positions that have clear requirements and that allow the development of a clear competency framework for the most suitable position holder. For such Civil Servants’ position the current methodology of National Council of Adult Education of Romania for designing of Occupational Standards is fully applicable.
The use of occupational standards is a challenge and will bring important benefits for all actors involved in the process of implementing civil service reforms as follows:
a.. Benefits for civil servants
· Support their professional development
· Open up a wider range of career possibilities
· Help them transfer competence to other jobs or work contexts
· Give them confidence they are working to best practice standards
· Help them speak with authority and present a professional image
b. Benefits for line managers
· Ensure their staff are clear about their responsibilities and competent to carry them out
· Provide a ready-made framework for performance management and appraisal
· Make assessment an integral part their work
· Help them provide specific feedback designed to improve performance
· Allow them to delegate responsibility to staff with confidence
· Ensure their staff comply with legal and organisational requirements
c. Benefits for public bodies
· Provide an integrated structure for management and development
· Align individual effort with organisational goals and targets
· Help develop and retain a highly skilled, motivated and flexible workforce
· Assure the quality required to win and retain contracts
· Provide a common language and standards of quality in partnerships
· Enhance public confidence and understanding of the organisation and the sector
These benefits are broadly agreed and committing all the actors to provide support and resources to achieve the goal of adopting such standards for job design, job evaluation, recruitment and selection and performance management in Civil Service.
Note:
The paper intends to present the experience in Romania for establishing the qualification framework in the Civil Service in order to provide the basis for discussion and exchange of experience with the participants in the Working Group III on Training and Qualification in the Civil Service.
References:
1. A SCANS Report for America 2000. The Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills, a publication of the US Department of Labor, June 1991. Document available on-line at http://wdr.doleta.gov/SCANS/whatwork/whatwork.pdf
2. Project Europeaid/121949/D/SV/RO 2004/016-772.04.02.02 “Establishment of National Authority of Qualifications” – Information available on-line at http://cnfpa.ro
3. Project EuropeAid/121990/D/SV/RO – RO2004/016-772.01.03.01.2 - “Implementing Civil Service Reform In Romania” to provide support to National Agency of Civil Servants in strengthening its institutional capacities – Information available on-line at http://www.anfp.gov.ro
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