The civil service recruitment procedures have significantly improved after the adoption of the relevant decree by the Government of Georgia on the 20th of July this year. Overall the legal guarantees of the recruitment process being conducted in an objective and impartial way has been strengthened by the legislation. Nevertheless in the process of comparing Georgian legislation with international practices (the UK and Estonia) it was found that the legislation regulating civil service recruitment issues in Georgia needs further improvements, hence our recommendations are as follows.

• The composition of the selection committees should be partially permanent. Given the specification of every single post the experts in the given sphere should be invited in the committees on an ad hoc basis;

• The ten days period for submitting an application enshrined in the legislation often may not be enough for making a well prepared application e.g. in the cases when submitting letters of recommendations, certificates and etc. is requested. Thus lengthening the period up to two weeks is advisable;

• Conducting tests in the process of selection should be made obligatory. In addition the scores of the tests should be granted higher importance then the results of other selection stages, e.g. interviews. Avoiding the score based assessment should only be made possible in exceptional circumstances based on the well-grounded decision. This will facilitate to conducting the selection process based on the highest possible standard for insuring the unbiased and objective assessment of the applicants;

• According to the legislation as a result of the selection process only one best candidate is selected by the committee. It is advisable for the committees to also nominate the second-best candidate. As a result in the case of the selected candidate turning down the offer the need of conducting the second selection procedure will be avoided.

• Each applicant should be provided with a well-grounded decision giving the reasons for turning down his/her candidacy;

• The Civil Service Bureau should be provided with more leverages for monitoring the activities of the selection committees. Precisely, the representatives of the Bureau should be given the opportunity to attend the interviews with the applicants. In addition the deputy chair of the section committees, as well as the chair and the deputy chair of the appeal committees should be appointed by the head of the Civil Service Bureau;

• In order to facilitate to the process of citizen control of the work of selection committees, it is advisable for the Civil Service Bureau to prepare and upload on its web-page the statistical information on the number and the results of selection procedures held (in how many case was the selection process finalized with an appointment), in cases when the vacant post was not filled what were the reason for this, which sector (private or public) were the appointees employed in before joining the public sector and etc.

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