“The most important part of public administration reform is the people,” said Jim Winkler, director of the Viet Nam Competitiveness Initiative project.

He added that civil servants had to be professional, competent, highly-skilled and highly-motivated.

Jairo Acuna-Alfaro, UNDP policy advisor on administration reform, said that without competent staff, administrative reform meant nothing.

“It [training staff] has to be the first priority,” he said.

“At the end of the day, any public administration system can only be as good as the people who run it.”

Human resource development is a crucial part of Viet Nam’s first public administration reform master plan (2001-10), which includes institutional reform and public finance management.

The Law on Public Officials and Civil Servants, which will come into effect next January, would play a major part in the reform of public institutions, said Setsuko Yamazaki, UNDP country director.

“The law will help manage human resources in the public sector in a more transparent and meritocratic way, thereby helping to build a more capable public sector,” she said.

By separating elected public officials from civil servants, corruption in general would be more effectively addressed.

However, Acuna-Alfaro said the new law was far from perfect and would need to be amended in the near future.

He said the law was more about keeping checks on public officials and civil servants than enabling them to work more effectively.

“It’s very good to make a distinction between cong chuc [public officials] and can bo [civil servants] but the law misses out vien chuc [normal employees at professional institutions such as hospitals or schools],” he said.

Dinh Xuan Hoa, the Ministry of Home Affairs’ Public Administration Reform Department director, said the new law should be detailed and clear.

“We haven’t been able to tell what are the focuses of the reform process,” he said.

The 2011-20 master plan will be formulated by the Ministry of Home Affairs and submitted to the Prime Minister by the end of next year.

VietNamNet/VNS