By the decree of the First President – Elbasy, 2019 is declared the Year of Youth. As part of supporting young talented Kazakhstanis, a separate work is also being carried out in the public service. In the election program of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the task was set to form the Presidential Youth Personnel Reserve. In an exclusive interview with Primeminister.kz, Deputy Chairman of the Agency for Civil Service Affairs Marat Daueshov spoke about the most important aspects of the personnel reserve.

— What practical steps and systemic measures are planned to be taken to increase the efficiency of the state apparatus?

The formation of an effective and professional state apparatus in the country is carried out within the framework of the Plan of the Nation “100 Concrete Steps” — a program document initiated in 2015 by the First President, Elbasy Nazarbayev.

Thus, hiring, training and promotion systems have been improved, modern personnel management tools have been introduced, and the quality of public servants has increased.

As a result, the level of turnover in the civil service has almost halved (from 11.2% in 2015 to 6.2% in 2018). The number of out-of-competition appointments decreased by 18 times (from 6.5 thousand in 2015 to 369 in 2018).

The reform increased the possibility of employment in the public service on the principles of open competition and transparency of selection.

To date, civil service begins with grassroots positions, and employees are promoted on the basis of competence and training. Since the implementation of the reform, there has been a threefold increase in people who have started their careers from the initial levels (from 2,569 to 8,481).

Thanks to the reform, conditions have been created for career advancement of employees within state bodies. The number of civil servants who have advanced through the institution of internal competitions has increased 5 times (from 1,348 in 2015 to 6,826 in 2018).

These measures have strengthened the belief in the possibility of advancement solely of merit. This is evidenced by the results of the opinion poll. The latest opinion poll showed that 80% of civil servants praised the objectivity of the selection process.

Work to further improve the efficiency of the state apparatus continues as part of the implementation of the approaches voiced in the election program of the president of the country.

Currently, our Agency is working on strengthening the principles of meritocracy, implementing strategic personnel planning and expanding the social security of public servants. Also, on behalf of the Head of State, work has begun on the formation of a Presidential youth personnel reserve.

Timely and high-quality implementation of all the tasks outlined is under the constant control of the Chairman of the Agency Anar Zhailganova.

— Admission of applications for participation in the Presidential Youth Personnel Reserve have started. Tell us about the objectives of the project? Will persons enlisted in the personnel reserve be required to be employed in the civil service and for what positions?

President Kassym-Jomart Tokaev outlined the need to create a Presidential Youth Personnel Reserve in his election program.

Then the Head of State emphasized that the reserve should become an effective social elevator for young people. Representatives from various industries, people of different professions can take part in the selection. These are not necessarily civil servants; they can be representatives from the quasi-public sector, the private sector, and civil society.

The reserve will unite potential candidates for senior management positions of the state, the so-called leaders of the new formation” who are able to quickly make decisions and quickly adapt to changing working conditions.

The very range of managerial posts that can be assigned to those who go through all stages of the selection and fall into the list of reservists is quite wide. Our Agency informed citizens in detail about this. This information is also published on the specially launched pkrezerv website.

The mere fact of being admitted to the Reserve does not guarantee appointment to a public position.

If there is a corresponding vacancy, a person who is in the Reserve may be recommended for this position by the National Commission on Youth Personnel Reserve.

Appointments can be made both from the number of persons enrolled in the Reserve, and from among other persons in the manner prescribed by the legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

— How is registration of selection participants to the Reserve carried out? To date, how many applicants have applied for participation?

Registration of applicants to the Reserve runs from Sep. 1 to Sep. 30, 2019.

In the age of digitalization, we have launched a special online platform — pkrezerv.kz to ensure maximum transparency and convenience of citizens, centralized access to information. The platform has a very accessible interface.

The site contains all the necessary information on the selection in the Reserve.

To date (as of Sep. 16, 2019), 3,500 participants have registered on the site, 398 of them have completed the registration process. Potential participants in the selection should not postpone registration for the last day, since it requires online completion of a personal profile, downloading the necessary documents, including a letter of recommendation.

— As far as we understand, is there an age requirement? Tell us more about the criteria and conditions for participation in the project?

Among the main requirements for participants in the selection for the Presidential Youth Personnel Reserve are citizenship of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the age of 35 years, education and a total work experience of at least 5 years.

Citizens of the Republic of Kazakhstan who are both in the country and abroad are allowed to participate in the competition. They will be able to qualify along with everyone through the online platform pkrezerv.kz.

All citizens who meet the requirements will be able to participate in the selection to the Reserve, with the exception of political civil servants appointed by the President.

Candidates will also be checked for compliance with the conditions of admission to the civil service: for incapacity, whether there is a court decision with the deprivation of the right to hold public office for a certain period, the commission of a corruption crime, the presence of an outstanding or unexpunged criminal record, the commission of a crime as part of a criminal group, etc.

— Will applicants pass any exams or testing for admission to the personnel reserve?

After submitting an application for participation in the selection, candidates have to go through several successive stages, in particular:

The first stage is the acceptance of participants' documents.

The second stage is testing candidates. The test aims to determine the ability of the applicant to work with complex text and numerical information.

This allows you to determine the theoretical training of candidates, the level of their analytical and critical thinking, logic.

The third stage is an assessment of leadership qualities, the level of strategic vision, motivation and values ​​of candidates.

To do this, candidates need to write an essay and present their socially significant projects.

Through an essay, candidates will be assessed for literacy, erudition and breadth of knowledge, level of critical thinking, logic, reasonedness and validity of conclusions.

In turn, the presentation of the projects is aimed at assessing the applicant’s vision for the development of the relevant industry or business lines depending on the selected group of posts.

The stage also includes an assessment of the competencies of the candidates.

By assessing the competencies of the participants, their personal values, level of motivation, as well as the presence of managerial competencies will be revealed.

The fourth stage is the interview of participants by the Expert Commission. At this stage, participants are allowed who have shown the best results for the previous stages of selection in the aggregate points.

It is supposed to conduct an individual interview with each applicant who has successfully passed the previous stages of selection.

Based on the results of the interview, the Expert Commission by open voting forms a list of candidates recommended for admission to the Reserve, and sends it to the National Commission for consideration.

The final stage of the selection is the consideration of the candidacies of the participants in the National Commission for the personnel reserve.

The participants with the highest scores recommended by the Expert Commission are allowed to this stage.

Based on the results of the commission’s meeting, a decision is made to enroll candidates for the Presidential Youth Reserve.

— How transparent and objective will the selection mechanism go?

For transparency of the process of forming a reserve, citizens will have access to information about project participants. Moreover, after each stage of selection, we will publish in the automated system and on the Agency’s website qyzmet.gov.kz a list of participants admitted to the next stage.

To ensure transparency in decision-making, industry experts will be involved in the candidate assessment phase. They will be able to track the objectivity of selection processes.

One of the stages is the assessment of the values ​​and competencies of the candidates.

For this, we attract qualified specialists in the field of human resources management. Competency assessment will be carried out by experts at the Academy of Public Administration under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan using group assessment tools. This will be carried out using group assessment tools, involving various types of tasks for determining competencies.

For this, experts in the field of human resources management will be involved, who have been practicing similar assessment methods for many years. Planned audio and video recording group assessment.

In general, at the selection stages, we involve several experts, including industry experts, in the process of evaluating each candidate.

Evaluation experts cannot see the personal data of participants, in particular their names and surnames. They will be encrypted. As a result, they will only see a set of numbers and letters. At each stage, the identifier obtained by experts will be unique. In other words, the evaluators have no way of knowing, for example, whose essay they are evaluating.

— As you know, in Kazakhstan, the corps “A” is in force, which includes administrative public positions of a managerial level, for which there is a special procedure for selection to the personnel reserve, competitive selection, passage and termination of public service, as well as special qualification requirements. What is the difference between the selection for the Presidential Youth Personnel Reserve from Corps “A”?

Since 2013, the Institute of Corps "A" has been operating in Kazakhstan. The presidential youth personnel reserve and the reserve of Corps A are completely different programs with different goals. I note a number of differences.

Firstly, the age category. The presidential youth personnel reserve is formed to create a social elevator specifically for young people. Therefore, persons not older than 35 years may be included in the Reserve.

Secondly, the range of posts for which reservists can be appointed differs. As you know, the posts of corps “A” include the posts of executive secretaries, heads of staff and committee chairmen. Accordingly, reservists of corps “A” are assigned to these posts. And the range of posts of the Presidential Youth Personnel Reserve is much wider — in addition to the designated posts, it includes the posts of ministers, vice ministers, regional akims, cities. of Nur-Sultan, Almaty, Shymkent and their deputies, akims of cities, regions, as well as chairmen and board members of national companies.

Thirdly, the selection procedure for the reserve is also different.

When forming selection approaches to the Presidential Reserve, we tried to take into account all current trends in Kazakhstani society.

So, in recent years, the Internet activity of Kazakhstanis has increased, digital technologies and electronic services are developing. Therefore, the reception of documents and several stages of selection is carried out remotely in an automatic mode.

In addition, the task of forming the Presidential Reserve is the selection of creative and talented youth. In this regard, in the selection procedures there is no verification of knowledge by candidates of the law.

— Thank you for the interview!