Three percent quota not needed

Most controversial among the suggestions for the overhaul of the evaluation system is the introduction of a quota under which three percent of government employees shall be given C grade every year and if a civil servant receives C grade for three consecutive years, he (she) will be dismissed or forced to retire.

Premier Wu Den-yih questioned the need to change the current evaluation system. Some local government officials as well as the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) cast doubt about the fairness of the quota.

In fact, pertinent rules are already available to allow responsible authorities to reward outstanding subordinates or punish or dismiss underachievers. There is even D grade prescribed for certain civil servants whose poor performance, according to their bosses, warrants immediate dismissal. But, the real problem is not with the system itself but with the way it is implemented. More often than not, the chiefs of various government agencies, who are in a position to give evaluation grades, are influenced by the traditional Chinese culture which advises against being seen as a “bad person” in giving the C grader or by the selfish human nature that spawns unfairness in grading.

At present, the government has been adopting a quota system for A-grade civil servants under which those receiving A grade in performance evaluation usually cannot surpass half of the number of the staff members of a unit. Well, as a matter of fact, any quota system is an “evil” in that it deprives pertinent officials of their vested authority and responsibility to handle personnel affairs at their discretion. To put it bluntly, such a restriction betrays a certain degree of mistrust in high government officials concerning their ability to make sound judgment in management.

Fairness is the key to the success of any system, but no system can ensure fairness without competent and fair-minded people in charge. When one thinks of enforcing any form of quota, based on a false sense of equality, in an attempt to remedy a scheme considered insufficient one way or another, it injects an even more dangerous notion, that is, the questioning of the integrity and caliber of the people responsible for implementing the system.

Therefore, before the reform of the existing evaluation system, top government officials must first make efforts to enhance the trustworthiness and competence of the people they appoint to head government bodies at all levels. Once they have achieved this, they will probably find the present performance evaluation system for civil servants sufficient to do the job required.

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