“The Merit Ladder” was presented today as a new component of public administration reform, aimed at strengthening transparency, equal opportunities, and merit-based assessment in both recruitment and civil servants’ career development.

Prime Minister Rama, who attended the event, said that merit is essential to motivating employees, strengthening their sense of belonging to their institution and achieving the shared objectives of public administration.

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Prime Minister Edi Rama: Good Day to everyone! The Minister has organised this meeting to launch a process through a concise presentation which, undoubtedly, has a broader scope than the main points outlined to you.

On the need to take merit in public administration to another level, the truth is that, as I have said before, I myself was very sceptical about the prospects of genuinely improving the quality of our administration. And I was not only sceptical but also, in a sense, concerned that, once we had successfully emerged from the “tunnel” in which we spent several years, which I called the “tunnel of humiliation”, and opened negotiations with the EU, we would find ourselves in an extremely difficult position. I did not believe that our internal capacities, our administration, would be able to handle the negotiations, beginning with the screening process, which is extremely challenging and complex, and which involved, and still involves, hundreds of people, rather than just ten or twenty.

I shared this concern with colleagues, and Adea has heard me say: “All right, we will open negotiations, but what happens next? We may be able to find ten people, fifteen, twenty, but where will we find hundreds of people who can hold their own against those masters of Brussels bureaucracy and see us through such a challenging process?”

And it proved to be one of the most welcome surprises, because, in the work I do, surprises are generally unwelcome. The welcome ones are usually the things we anticipate, develop and bring to fruition. The things that happen unexpectedly are generally unwelcome. But this was a welcome surprise, because what Albania’s large team of representatives demonstrated across all those chapters was an Albanian administration entirely different from the one even I had in mind.

I, too, had been influenced by the intense, daily pressure of gossip and the constant accumulation of negative news and incidents involving public administration employees, to the point that, at that stage of our journey, I had little confidence in the administration’s capacities.

 

And, of course, when we saw this for ourselves in such a challenging test, I also realised that we could push further. At the same time, developments meant that the need to push further came to be shared by the people themselves, by the wider public. At a certain point, they seized on a cause which, for many of them, was not in itself important enough to bring them out in protest. They came out because of a strong need to voice concerns that had accumulated and to demand a much-needed acceleration of progress, at a time when Albania has, in practical terms, moved beyond the era of shortages and entered an era of high expectations.

And one of the most striking points raised by the many voices that I, together with others, tried to listen to was precisely merit. How much does merit count in Albania when someone aspires to serve in the Albanian state, to serve the Albanian state?

 

Having said all this, the truth is that the transformation of our administration is reflected in a series of assessments of particular importance to its reputation, from the World Bank’s GovTech assessment to the National Cyber Security Index and the Global Innovation Index. These clearly show that Albania’s position today bears no resemblance to its position only a few years ago. This also includes the highly significant fact that SIGMA itself, the instrument through which the EU assesses the quality, needs and potential of public administrations, has ranked Albania first in the region for public administration reform and improvements in public administration.

 

But beyond all these indices stands the individual: the person who expects quality services from the administration; the person who wants access to a career in public administration on the strength of their merit; the person already working within the administration who wants their merit to determine their progress up the career ladder.

 

And we are all aware that what defines the relationship between the state and the citizen is this: citizens do not encounter global indices, strategies, programmes or organisational charts. Nor do they see themselves in the assessments that reflect Albania’s progress. They encounter the people who represent the state, and they experience the state personally.

 

This is why we have undertaken this entire transformation process, which, to be honest, has not attracted much fanfare but has considerable depth. It begins with “Besa”, moves on to “Pasqyrë Albania”, which will bring the entire state together in one place, and continues with “Prania Besnike”. Today, we are adding a new component: “The Merit Ladder”.

I will not dwell on what we have done. Instead, I will focus on the foundation of this new project, for which I want to congratulate and thank Adea for the way she has approached this entire process.

 

Its foundation is the internal survey of civil servants of the Republic of Albania. For the first time, a very large number of civil servants have confidentially expressed their views on the situation within the administration and their aspirations for making it a better place for them to work.

One finding is very clear. Beyond the improvements and the substantial salary increases, which SIGMA itself highlights by noting that, compared with 2022, civil servants’ positive assessment of their pay, or their relative satisfaction with it, has risen from 13% to 47%, a very serious issue remains, more pronounced than in other surveys. The overwhelming majority of civil servants, the people working in the administration, say: “Whether you work or not seems to make no difference to how you are assessed or how you advance in your career.”

 

Worse still, their assessment is even more negative because those who do not work face no adverse consequences in their evaluations. Meanwhile, the same people, a relatively smaller group than the rest, shoulder a much greater burden and see no difference in how they are assessed. To be fair, this is a longstanding issue.

Some of the secretaries-general are here. Not all of them have come, because not all of them have as little work to do as I do, or as the Minister of Health, the Minister of State or the Minister for Relations with Parliament. But the secretaries general are the starting point of an assessment process that runs from the top down, and if they give way, the entire system gives way.  We had an unforgettable meeting during our first term, if I remember correctly, when everyone’s evaluations were astonishingly positive.

 

At the time, Apple, a star on the global business stage, was said to have achieved an efficiency level of over 90%. According to the evaluations carried out that year, the Albanian administration surpassed Apple in efficiency and in everyone’s fulfilment of their duties. No one failed, and no one was average. Dazzling brilliance everywhere.

Of course, that is no longer the case. But the fact that it is no longer the case does not mean that things are as they should be, and this reassures a large number of people within the administration, understandably, I believe.

In any event, all the steps taken on salaries, the special bonus and the incentive package, together with all the clear signs of people’s desire to join the state administration, which are readily apparent in the calls for applications to the excellence programmes and national internship programmes, make it impossible for us to stop here.

 

Citizens are asking for more. The negotiation process, the accession process as a whole and membership itself bring far greater challenges for the administration. And we have a duty to respond, through actions rather than words, to all those within the administration who feel that their work goes unrecognised, and who even feel disregarded because, however much they do, they are assessed in the same way as those who do less than they should.

 

This is a priority obligation for us today. By motivating people through merit, making merit a fundamental principle of working together within the administration and a driver of competition, and making it the basis of the assurance that, when you seek to join the state administration, you will be assessed for who you are, we can now make a leap that, until yesterday, seemed impossible even to contemplate. Today, we are discussing it, but it will take a collective effort from all of us to make it a reality.

I want to add that these are not simply words. They are directly linked to the mechanism presented today, which rests on several key elements. The first I would single out is the transformation of the way recruitment and assessment themselves are conducted.

 

We have now reached the stage of finally implementing an extraordinary project, which brings Oxford’s examination centre into the Educational Services Centre of the Republic of Albania. Everything concerning examinations in our university system, in our education system, will be conducted in the same way as at Oxford’s examination centre. Through the Educational Services Centre, we will make that Oxford examination infrastructure available for recruitment into the administration and for career progression within it.

 

This will enable us to achieve in this area what we achieved some time ago with university admissions. Everyone remembers what a major problem getting into university used to be, because there was no respect for merit. It was a scramble to get ahead of others with a push from behind, through personal connections, political parties or money. For many years now, university examinations have been free of complaints. There are no complaints!

 

In the years before that reform, however, the complaints and injustices were glaring. People from families without a prominent name, families without the money to bribe anyone within the system, families from outlying areas, were left out. The contrast with today is clear. And now we need to go further, by bringing the administration into this process.

 

Another point is that the way vacancies are currently advertised and people are informed cannot be called transparency or openness to equal opportunities. As the Minister said, we will launch an active digital catalogue. On one side, it will show all the Albanian state’s needs in terms of professions, levels of experience and so on. On the other, anyone who wishes to be notified whenever a vacancy matching their profession and experience opens anywhere in Albania will be able to enter their details.

 

This means that everyone, in Albania or abroad, who wants to join the administration can proactively express their availability. I am not saying submit an application, but express their availability. Naturally, this will be through a confidential system in which each person gives consent to be notified whenever a position opens that, based on their CV, they might be interested in.

 

This will ensure that everyone can be informed and everyone has the opportunity to take part in competitive selection procedures, which will reach another level of transparency and protection from the subjective influence that distorts competition. In this way, we will seek to ensure that recruitment, as well as career progression within the administration, begins to rest on data available to the Albanian state, beyond an individual’s relationship with a superior.

 

So, every year, or according to a predetermined schedule, everyone will be able to undergo testing through which they can improve their scores and increase their opportunities to move one step higher.

 

My final point concerns what happens to those in the excellence programme and those who join an introductory programme to take a first step towards public administration. In many cases, when their year of work ends, they are left outside the system and unable to continue, even when they have performed very well.

 

This, too, needs to be examined carefully, so that the relationship does not end abruptly, leading many people to start thinking that it happened because “I had no connections, I did not have this or that…”

 

These are, more or less, the points I wanted to address and have addressed. Let me emphasise once again that “The Merit Ladder” is another component of a new system in which artificial intelligence will serve as an ally, a partner and a source of support.

 

Through AI, we will be able to do much more to strengthen transparency and collect all the data from these processes that allow us to understand exactly how far we are reaching, both in informing people interested in joining the administration and in providing assurances to every individual that their efforts to join it will be judged on merit.

 

Merit is the central principle that we must all work on continuously and remain focused on. It is the foundation of motivation and of a sense of belonging, not merely to a job, but to an organisation, an institution, a department. It shapes how people work together towards the shared objectives of their institution, department and so on.

 

Thank you very much for your patience. I hope that we will soon see the first results. In the meantime, I want to share something with you here today, because this seemed the best place to announce it: next week, we will establish the Ministry of Public Administration.

 

We are doing this precisely because public administration has now become central to the government’s work. It is central to the government’s work, but also to Albania’s further development as a European state. Through the Ministry of Public Administration, a model found in many other European countries, we need to broaden the scope of our responsibilities, our work and, certainly, our ambitions to further strengthen the European state of the Albanian people.

 

And there is no question, or, more precisely, someone may question it, but from my perspective there is no question, that the only person who can lead the Ministry of Public Administration and take it forward is the current Minister of State for Public Administration.

 

So, Adea, I thank you once again for your dedication and professionalism. I also thank you for the fact that you never offer either praise or criticism lightly. You are always committed to ensuring that every word you say and every issue you address is followed through.

 

I therefore have great confidence that, on the foundations already laid, with the many milestones you have established along this path of transformation, and, of course, together with the colleagues who applauded you with such restraint, you will succeed in making the Ministry of Public Administration of the Republic of Albania a model institution, just as public administration itself should be a model.

 

Thank you very much!