Dialogue Platform to Discuss Public Service Remuneration Reform in Ukraine: Aspen Institute Kyiv Held the First of Six Dialogues in the frame of the Integrity and Governance Project

On November 26, leaders discussed public service remuneration reform in Ukraine. It was the first of six dialogues under the Integrity and Governance project.

Politicians, high-level civil servants, non-governmental and international organizations representatives, and experts who have supported the implementation of the reform in recent years have joined. During the dialogue, they exchanged views on the crucial issues in civil service remuneration. Also, they offered their thoughts on how to solve them.

Among the main problems were:

• Opacity, complexity, and inequality of the current system of civil service remuneration. It does not allow to attract the best professionals in the labor market.
• Lack of accumulated data on the remuneration of all civil servants.
• High influence of the manager on determining the size of the variable part of the salary, which can be used both to motivate the successful work of the employees and to encourage loyal but not always effective employees.
• The existence of “rich” and “poor” institutions, which leads to remuneration inequality for identical work.
• Reforming the old established system difficulty, which includes the inability to fire unproductive employees.
• Large-scale reform.
• Communication of the reform and explanation of the changes to civil servants.
• Lack of a coherent vision of public service remuneration reform among all stakeholders.

Linking it with other reforms, such as functional restructuring and public administration optimization, decentralization, development of a single employer brand for civil service, digitization, and data exchange, efficiency improving, the dialogue participants recognized the need to continue reforming the system of civil servants’ remuneration.

Roman Kobets, Ph.D. of Hryhorii Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy, moderated the event.

Olena Fomina, Integrity and Governance Project Director, coordinated the event.

–In recent years, the concept of integrity has become crucial for our society, especially in public sphere activities. Currently, this concept exists in several dimensions. Integrity is a mandatory qualification requirement for the position of judge, should be the main principle of a civil servant, and is separately developing in the academic field. In this context, we offered to consider one of the most pressing issues directly related to integrity – the public servants’ remuneration. It is the basis for any productive activity, especially in public service, – said Yuliya Tychkivska, Executive Director of Aspen Institute Kyiv.

Aspen Institute Kyiv team is grateful to the dialogue participants for their sincerity and impartiality in discussing an important topic. We are thankful to our EU4PAR project colleagues for their support in the dialogue preparation.

The event was held within the framework of the Integrity and Governance project. The Integrity and Governance project is supported by a grant from the National Endowment for Democracy.