Qualified HR At The Heart Of Administrative Modernization-SPAC Chief

(MENAFN- Jordan News Agency)

Amman, July 15 (Petra) The president of the Service and Public Administration Commission (SPAC), Fayez Nahar, said on Tuesday that the Public Sector Modernization Roadmap represents the third pillar of Jordan's reform process, serving as a crucial enabler for both political and economic modernization. He emphasized that the success of the roadmap's seven pillars hinges on qualified human capital.
Speaking during a panel at the National Dialogue titled "Toward a Strategic Partnership with Civil Society in Developing Public Administration in Jordan," organized by the Al-Hayat Center – Rased in cooperation with the European Union and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation, Nahar said human resources are central to institutional leadership, service delivery, legislative development, and organizational culture. This reality, he explained, necessitated a fundamental overhaul of the human resources system to keep pace with ongoing political and economic reforms.
He stressed that human resource systems must be flexible and responsive to rapid global transformations so that civil servants can reflect those changes positively in their performance and productivity.
Nahar described the new HR framework as a radical shift grounded in three core elements: first, the adoption of competency-based recruitment, with open calls for applications to ensure fairness and merit-based selection; second, a transition from personal classification to job-based classification systems; and third, a move toward centralized policy planning coupled with decentralized implementation a shift that led to the transformation of SPAC.
He noted that while the number of public sector employees in Jordan is proportional to the overall population and labor force, there is an imbalance across departments some have a surplus of staff, while others face shortages. This prompted the introduction of a new regulatory framework requiring a comprehensive review of institutional structures to align staffing levels with strategic plans and modernization objectives.
Nahar highlighted that a joint committee, including civil society experts, now monitors and reviews the annual staffing schedule. This committee assesses the size and efficiency of the public workforce, and he noted that the 2025 staffing schedule will differ significantly from previous versions, reflecting modern trends in public sector employment.
According to SPAC's statistics, 485,000 people expressed interest in public sector jobs as of early this year either unemployed or seeking to switch from the private sector. This surge, he said, has prompted the government to fully adopt open, merit-based recruitment practices focused on job-specific competencies in order to build an efficient and high-performing civil service.

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