The government opposes the abolition of assessment quotas for the advancement of civil servants and is exploring alternatives that accelerate career development. One hypothesis is to reduce the number of points required, which is currently 10 and normally equates to 10 years, to allow employees to skip a pay step, which translates into a pay increase. But the seniority count is also on the table, revealed yesterday to Dinheiro Vivo, the Secretary General of the Federation of Public Administration Unions (Fesap), José Abraão, at the end of the last technical meeting with the Presidency Ministry, with one with a view to revising the Integral Management and Performance Assessment System in Public Administration (SIADAP).
“The government is pushing for quotas to be maintained, but here there is the possibility of faster progress with fewer points,” said the union leader. “If those 10 points aren’t needed, if they’re less, then more employees will be able to advance in their careers,” the constraint imposed by circumventing appraisal quotas, he added. On the other hand, “there is also the possibility of seniority counting” to boost progression, Abraão added, pointing out that the government already gave a bonus this year to operational assistants with more than 30 years of service. career, allowing them to skip a position. That is, the solution could be identical.
The aggravation of the punishment, already in place today, of public leaders who fail to set goals or set them too late for their service members, preventing proper performance evaluation, is another of the measures included in the custody equation, within the scope of the review of SIADAP, as already reported by Público. The leader of Fesap confirmed to DV that the executive intends to strengthen the sanctions that apply to these leaders, “namely the revocation of their service commission”. That is, these employees risk losing the position of manager if they do not follow the rules for evaluating the employees under their supervision.
These changes to SIADAP, which are now being evaluated by the Ministry, are in addition to the already announced expansion of the assessment quota. Last week, Presidency Minister Mariana Vieira da Silva said at a parliamentary hearing that the government admits a “wider scope” of the scoring levels.
Currently, 75% of the state’s more than 745,000 employees can be rated “adequate” and receive a point in an annual evaluation cycle; 25% of employees qualify for the “relevant” rank, earning two points per year; and of these, only 5% can be considered “excellent”, making three points in 12 months. “This quota system is the most unfair in existence, because it is not possible to recognize merit. It is almost forbidden to be excellent,” said Fesap’s general secretary. In that sense, and responding to the demands of union structures, the executive is considering not only expanding those levels to allow more employees to achieve those three types of notation, but also limiting quota percentages to occupational category or specific career rather than to make them think about the entire universe of state workers.
Before the arrival of the troika in Portugal, “services rated as excellent were entitled to a 10% increase in the quota of ‘relevant’ and ‘excellent'”, recalls José Abraão. “However, it is not yet clear whether the government intends to reinstate this benefit,” he said.
According to the negotiations that started in 2021 with the unions, the process of quota expansion would continue this year. But the dissolution of parliament in December 2021, following the proposal for the state budget for 2022 with the help of the PCP and BE, when the PS did not have an absolute majority at the time and needed the help of the apparatus, it finally delayed the review of SIADAP, which is now resumed.
Technical meetings between the unions and the Presidency Ministry ended yesterday. Now the government has until July to prepare a diploma project for the new SIADAP which will be presented and discussed with the union structures before being approved by the Council of Ministers. The aim is for the revised assessment system to come into effect in 2025 and in 2026.
If there are measures that are still being analyzed by the executive, there are others that have already been secured by the government, such as the annual upgrade of the evaluation cycle, which currently takes place every two years, and the creation of a new note between “appropriate and “relevant”. In addition to these changes, there is another one that is already in effect that allows employees to keep the performance evaluation points left over from progress. For example, a worker with 12 points would use 10 to advance and lose the other two, but now those points are saved, allowing the next progress to be faster.
Salomé Pinto is a journalist for Dinheiro Vivo
Source: DN
