International Journal of Civil Service Reform and Practice

Dear Reader,

We are pleased to present the 18^th Issue of the International Journal of Civil Service Reform and Practice published by the Astana Civil Service Hub. This issue contains three articles and a book review.

The first article is a contribution from Azerbaijan presenting the country’s journey to competency-based civil service selection processes; a system that is better aligned with the rapid changes taking place in the labour market. Maleyka Abbaszade, Head of the SEC Board of Directors and Parviz Kazimov, Leader of the Competency and Professional Potential Evaluation Unit of the SEC present in detail the changes made in assessment methods, focusing on cognitive abilities and competencies aimed at enhancing selection practices in the recruitment of civil servants.

The next two articles focus on local government modernisation.

The first of these two looks at the decentralisation of governance at the village level in India and its evolution over the years, as well as the challenges it still faces in practice. Specifically, the article presents the historical development of the institutions at the local level in order to form a comprehensive perspective of their evolution and it continues with the assessment of the current state of affairs and the challenges they are confronted with. It is written by Prabhat Kumar Datta, a seasoned professional in this field.

The second constitutes a case study of the modernisation of local representative bodies using the Pavlodar Regional Maslikhat in Kazakhstan as an example, and it is written by Ilya Terenchenko, the Chairman of the Pavlodar Regional Maslikhat. The article presents the case of the Pavlodar regional maslikhat in its quest for modernisation and it puts forward some ideas for improving local governance systems.

This Issue concludes with a book review prepared by Professor Pan Suk Kim, a distinguished scholar in public administration from the Republic of Korea. The book is titled "Public Service Evolution in the 15 Post Soviet Countries: Diversity in Transformation”. It is a collaborative product of more than two dozen experts, who were familiar with the reforms and changes in the public sector of the post-Soviet countries, and it is an attempt to analyse the processes and dynamics of the public sector and civil service reform in post-Soviet countries.

The authors of the first chapter – Alikhan Baimenov and Panos Liverakos; also, editors of the book – provide a comprehensive overview of the reforms these countries pursued in nurturing a professional public administration and a competent public service capable of accomplishing the countries’ sustainable development objectives. The remaining fifteen chapters of the book focus on each of the fifteen countries’ experience in a broad range of areas in the process of transformation of their public administration and civil service systems over the course of a generation.

This review sheds light on the transformational dynamics of the varying national outcomes that began to crystallise a generation after the disintegration of the Soviet Union and reveals the influence of various factors on the trajectories of these countries between 1991 and 2021.

The Editorial Team