Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in his greeting speech on Thursday at an conference on “Public Administration, Democratic Governance and Social Solidarity” held for the 30-year anniversary of the operation of the National Center of Public Administration, stated that the event coincides with the launch of a major reform undertaken by the government with the view to meeting a commitment which the citizens and the public administration officers have heard so many times but unfortunately has never come into effect.

The Greek government’s new bill that will be tabled in the Hellenic Parliament in the coming days focuses on modernizing and freeing the Greek administration from political parties’ influence and interdependencies. According to PM Tsipras, who has set out today the bill’s main points at an event held for the 30-year anniversary of the National Center for Public Administration, this initiative will radically change the structure and the way the Greek public sector works, fighting clientelism, corruption and nepotism.

The bill’s key innovations are:

• Setting up a National Registry of highly qualified personnel to staff all high rank posts.
• Putting forward a new assessment system, guaranteeing twofold evaluation (for the first time all high ranking civil servants will also be assessed by their employees).
• Setting up a new selection system of high ranking civil servants based on meritocracy and transparency.
• Drafting new ministries’ organizational charts. For the first time, civil servants will staff the posts of Secretary General, for a full 5-year term, ensuring the Greek administration’s effective depoliticizing and its undisturbed continuity.
• Upgrading the National Center for Public Administration that will assume a monitoring role over the Greek administration.
• Promoting the use of new technologies.
• Accelerating some already foreseen and agreed recruitment of personnel in the understaffed sectors of education and health. These recruitments have been originally scheduled to take place within the next 5 years, some of which though are urgently needed.

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TAGS: GOVERNMENT & POLITICS | REFORMS