Civil Service: What Is Needed Is Reform of Business Processes and Pay

Civil Service

The ways in which our civil servants are being tormented are endless. First came the invention of Corps A and Corps B, then a ban on smartphones, and now the authorities have taken issue with clothing. Soon they will be deciding how many days a week civil servants may have a personal life.

All of this is very sad, and it reminds me more than anything of fighting cockroaches with the lights on.

I recently read a news item in which the akim of some region disclosed how much they earn: something in the region of KZT 750,000 a month. Add various bonuses and free apartments, and the total comes to KZT 1 million a month at best, roughly $3,000.

Incidentally, in Switzerland, for example, that is the income of an ordinary janitor or general laborer.

It is clear that living on such a salary is rather hard, and that finding an effective manager with no interest in additional income at this pay is practically impossible. Many civil servants have side income, and quite often their main income comes precisely from that side income, while their work in the civil service is a way of helping their business.

Even if every civil servant wore cheap Kazakhstani suits and carried a phone costing KZT 10,000, it would change absolutely nothing.

Because of constant fear, oversight and endless inspections, every civil servant first thinks about how to cover himself, and only then about how to help.

Endless formal replies and bureaucracy have buried the poor civil servants so deeply that when you come to see them, you realize that your letter, request or appeal is somewhere far down in a pile, and that moving it to the top would take very serious lobbying.

Add to this the various emergencies and the calls from above reminding them that something is "urgent, urgent," and you will understand that they have no time left for their regular work, which is the most important.

Because of constant rotation in senior positions, many officials physically cannot get to grips with all the details and rely largely on the middle tier. That is why it is the middle tier that holds the most power in ministries and akimats. Its members can frighten a poor minister, akim or their deputies so badly that they will not sign a single document, or, on the contrary, can write that everything is in perfect order, and then such a paper moves quickly, even if it contains outright nonsense. Few akims, ministers or deputies understand the intricacies of business processes, because they are constantly in meetings, briefings and on various trips. They simply have no time to work.

All of this points to the extreme inefficiency of the entire state apparatus.

Even the new Ministry of Civil Service Affairs is unable to change anything, so it busies itself with simulating vigorous activity: Corps A and B, clothing, phones and sundry other things.

What is needed is not window dressing but a complete overhaul of business processes. Take each business process, study it, and see where the bottlenecks are, where there are redundant links, and where there are unnecessary approvals.

To stop officials from thinking about corruption, we need to introduce, alongside KPIs, proper pay with proper motivation.

I believe that if a ministry achieves its assigned goals, brings money into the treasury, or saves budget funds while meeting those goals, or optimizes the work of the enterprises under its authority, then such work should be paid decently, at least at the level of Samruk top managers, and perhaps even higher.

As long as civil servants think about how and where to earn money by using their official position, the result of their work will be zero. And under the current system, they have both the desire and the opportunity.

I know little about the civil service, but something is definitely wrong with it in our country.

One ministry depends on the decision of another, the akimat depends on the ministries, and everywhere there is confrontation and struggle, intrigue, concessions in exchange for concessions, and counterweights. The whole system rests not on a system but on personal relationships.

Take any initiative: if there was no order from above, it will be so tangled in bureaucracy that it will never leave the ministries, and if it does, it will emerge in such a deformed state that it will never work. Because here everyone wants to put in his two cents, even if the matter does not concern him. Just in case.