Athens, 09/01/2014 (Agence Europe) - On 9 January, Greece's Minister for Administrative Reform and e-Government Kyriakos Mitsotakis stated that his country wants to move from being a quantitative administration to a qualitative administration - at a time when the financial aid programme has called for a reduction in the number of civil servants and for mobility. The number of civil servants in Greece has been cut from 900,000 to the current 670,000. Only one out of five civil servants taking retirement is being replaced and temporary civil servants have been cut by over 15%. The salary burden has thus been reduced from €24 billion to €16 billion as a result of both the decrease in the number of civil servants and also cuts to their salaries by an average of 20%.
Just as it has reduced its number of civil servants, Greece also wants to make its public services more effective. “The challenge is not to reduce the size of the administration but to make it more efficient”, Mitsotakis stated. “A very important tool is that of mobility. We are in the process of using this fairly aggressively so that civil servants can move from posts where they are not useful to ones where they can be, and from the back office to the front office”, in order to be closer to the citizens, he said. “We are going to make 25,000 civil servants mobile. Those for whom we do not find a post will have to leave the administration”, he warned. Mitsotakis stated that he wants a permanent mobility plan to be set up.
Mitsotakis also said that Greece wants a “more effective organigram for important posts in the administration”. Promotion will focus more on merit that seniority. He stressed too that his country is in the process of setting up a system of central recruitment.
“One of the biggest changes is that we are leaving the culture of clientelism behind which meant that Greece had a bigger administration than it should have done”, Mitsotakis stated. He added that he is ready to share “our good practices”. (CG/transl.fl)