The Law on the Status of the Civil Servant (November 1999), is considered as the beginning of many significant efforts to create a depoliticized, meritocratically managed civil service, encompassing a small cadre of professional, technical and managerial positions within the Central Administration.

Besides the many achievements reached, during the years of implementation of the Civil service legislation, challenges persist in relation to the implementation of that Law. Therefore, the main objective of the Government of Albania is to ensure that the core objectives of its Civil Service Law are sustainably achieved.

Thus, within the framework of the civil service reform and in alliance with the strategic priorities of the Albanian government, the Department of Public Administration (DoPA) has received technical assistance from the World Bank on “Reviewing the Civil Service Law Implementation Challenges in Albania”.

As part of that commitment, it was agreed with the World Bank to undertake a review of implementation of the CSL, in order to better understand both why progress on some of the objectives of that law has proven particularly difficult, as well as why setbacks have occurred.  DoPA is also interested in using that review to develop proposals for addressing these problems.  The work proposed under this project has as its objectives to:

i)  lay out a set of reform options for addressing challenges faced in the CSL implementation, identifying the advantages, disadvantages, risks, and trade-offs posed by each reform option;

ii)  help both the Government and other key stakeholders (e.g. civil servants, the political opposition, civil society organizations concerned with governance or public administration issues) to consider these reform options and reach at least a modicum of agreement on which of them might be worth pursuing.

The major tasks of this project are the:

(a)  Implementation Review: Review implementation of Albania’s Law on the Status of the Civil Servant (CSL), in order to better understand both why progress on some of the objectives of that law has proven particularly difficult, as well as why setbacks have occurred following five years of implementation of the CSL;

(b)  Implementation Improvement Options Paper: Lay out a set of reform options for addressing the challenges identified in the CSL implementation review, identifying the advantages, disadvantages, risks, and trade-offs posed by each option; and

(c)  Implementation Improvement Options Deliberations: Help both the Government and other key stakeholders involved in these reforms (e.g., civil servants, the political opposition, civil society organizations concerned with governance or public administration issues) to consider these options and reach at least a modicum of agreement on which of them might be worth pursuing.  Prepare a summary of those deliberations and their conclusions and recommendations.

Key stakeholders would include, inter alia, public officials in the central agencies shouldering primary responsibility for overseeing implementation of the CSL (the Department of Public Administration, the Civil Service Commission), members of the Council of Ministers, civil servants drawn from various Ministries or other Central Administration bodies, representatives of the political opposition, donors who have supported the civil service reform effort, as well as civil society organizations interested in governance or public administration reform issues.

For further information, please contact:
Ms. Denada Kakeli, Project Coordinator for the Department of Public Administration, Ministry of Interior