France, private consultants to help reform civil service - The Best from Greece

In a move that is likely to lead to a number of sackings and job transfers, private consultants will be brought in to evaluate Greece’s civil servants in 2012, it was announced on Thursday.

Administrative Reform Minister Dimitris Reppas said that a bill would be submitted to Parliament in January that would set a time line for the evaluation by private firms to take place. Reppas said that the Supreme Council for Civil Personnel Selection (ASEP), a state body, would oversee the process.

“The evaluation of staff through an objective and reliable process will be the central pillar of our policy,” he said, adding that any civil servants found to be filling “dead” positions would be moved to ones where they could be more productive. However, there is little doubt that the evaluation process will also provide the government with a tool to decide which civil servants it should fire as part of cost-cutting measures.

Greece is in the process of placing 30,000 public workers in a labor reserve but has to reduce the number of people it pays from government coffers by 150,000 over the next three years. Among those most likely to face losing their jobs are civil servants with only basic education and skills.

Reppas revealed the latest initiative as part of a memorandum of cooperation that Greece had signed with France and the European Union Task Force. The EU officials are acting as mediators between Athens and bloc members in a bid to provide Greece with expertise to carry out structural reforms.

Reppas said that France would assist Greece in seven areas, including the structure of the state, human resource management, tackling bureaucracy as well as combating corruption.