State Civil Service Chief Shifts Senior Hiring Tenders to Government Ministries

New Civil Service Commissioner Doron Cohen told directors-general of government ministries, support units and state hospitals on Wednesday morning that he has decided to transfer all 2,300 senior hiring tenders from the Civil Service Commission to the ministries themselves.

Cohen said implementation instructions will be published soon, including details on how and when the change will be completed and what technological solution will support it. The move was not coordinated with the Attorney General’s Office.

In his statement, Cohen said the step advances a policy of efficiency and human-capital management that the commission has been promoting for more than a decade, with the goal of creating an independent, professional, effective and flexible system to recruit the best candidates. He said it is part of a broader process of delegating authority to ministries and further decentralizing operational powers to professionals responsible for human-capital management.

Cohen said the aims are to bring in the most suitable candidates, reduce bureaucracy, remove barriers and bottlenecks, and strengthen ministries’ ability to manage the core professional areas of their work independently. The reform applies to senior positions such as deputy directors-general, division heads and legal advisers. Under the current system, the commission chooses and runs the tender committees; under Cohen’s decision, each ministry will manage its own senior tenders and may appoint committee members under existing or future rules, giving ministries new influence over which civil servants can be called before the selection panel if they meet the relevant criteria.