Appreciating capacity assessment exam of customs officials

	Implement capacity assessment for 458 customs team leaders in the Northern area
	Assessing the capacity of the team leaders that are both good at professional knowledge and management skills
	Improve knowledge of goods' origin

Standing Deputy Head of the Customs Reform and Modernization and Committee Luong Khanh Thiet (left) and Deputy Director of Hai Phong Customs Department Nguyen Kien Giang (right) supervise at the examination room of the Hai Phong Customs Department on August 17. Photo: T.Binh.

Broaden knowledge

Hai Phong Customs Department held a capacity assessment exam for 452 civil servants who do not hold leadership positions of subordinate units in the two days from 17 to 18 August.

Deputy Director Nguyen Kien Giang, Vice Chairman of the Council of Capacity Assessment Examination of Hai Phong Customs said that the unit has always focused on training to improve capacity and qualifications for civil servants. In 2008, 2011, 2016 and 2019, Hai Phong Customs Department organized capacity assessment test for civil servants

“For the implementation of the 2-level capacity assessment model under the direction of the General Department of Customs, Hai Phong Customs Department has actively deployed related tasks. Given by the close and effective coordination with the Customs Reform and Modernization Department, the unit has completed the preparations, ensuring the best conditions for this assessment," said Deputy Director Nguyen Kien Giang emphasized.

As noted by the reporter of Customs Magazine, the assessment has created an exciting learning atmosphere at Hai Phong Customs Department for many months. After the first exam on the morning of August 17, civil servant Pham Thi Khanh Linh (working at the Risk Management Division), was the first candidate of the Department to achieve a perfect score (100/100 points).

Sharing with us after the end of the exam, Ms. Pham Thi Khanh Linh said that although she was a little nervous at the beginning, thanks to careful preparation, she was very confident.

“After the plan of Capacity Assessment Examination is issued by the General Department of Customs, the Risk Management Division has planned to review for all civil servants in the unit. In which, the unit has assigned specialized tasks to each civil servant. In addition, at the beginning of the morning working every day, each civil servant who is assigned specialized task will lecture on the content covered by him to other colleagues. After reviewing, civil servant will have made pilot tests on the system of the General Department of Customs. With this way, civil servants have both in-depth knowledge and master other related professional fields," said Ms. Pham Thi Khanh Linh.

According to civil servant Pham Thi Khanh Linh, the perfect score in the exam is an encouragement for her efforts of studying over the past time. But more importantly, this assessment helps me and my colleagues improve our professional knowledge. “My working position is to advise and synthesize risk management, but through studying, I have been trained and mastered more knowledge, such as knowledge of risk criteria management. ", Ms. Pham Thi Khanh Linh added.

The effectiveness of the capacity assessment examination shared by Ms. Pham Thi Khanh Linh is also what other candidates shared, especially civil servants working in positions that require a large amount of knowledge such as procedures, post-clearance inspection, etc.

According to Head of Personnel and Organization Division (Hai Phong Customs Department) Hoang Thi Ngoc An, with the thorough preparation of the unit and the coordination of the Customs Reform and Modernization Department, the exam took place seriously, met the set goals and requirements, the majority of candidates achieved good results, notably, the whole department had 17 civil servants with perfect scores

Create a regular learning atmosphere

According to the Customs Reform Modernization Committee, by the end of August 21, there are units organizing the capacity assessment exam including: Hanoi Customs Department, Hai Phong Customs Department, Da Nang Customs Department, Anti-smuggling and Investigation Department. The exams were organized seriously, thoughtfully, ensuring the requirements set forth. Through the exams, it shows that the spirit of hard studying of civil servants, many civil servants achieved perfect scores.

With experience in four units that have organized the exams, Deputy Head of the Standing Committee of the Customs Reform and Modernization Committee Luong Khanh Thiet said that to successfully organize exams, it is necessary to pay attention to both organizational work (logistics, facilities…) and review time for civil servants as candidates of the exams.

Regarding the new points of the capacity assessment exam of 2023, Mr. Luong Khanh Thiet said that this year is the first time the General Department of Vietnam Customs introduced the method of formulating principle questions. If in the past, each multiple-choice question had only four specific answer options, leading to a situation where candidates could memorize without understanding, remembering the correct answers.

To overcome this situation, in 2023, a multiple-choice question will have many correct answers and many incorrect answers. The answers are combined together to create a combination of four different answer options on the exam. Thus, a principle question will generate many questions with different answer, thus the candidates are required to grasp and understand the original professional content to do the exam.

Thanks to this reform, this year's civil servants will be given much more favorable conditions in the review process. First of all, the set of assessment questions in 2023 is public (in previous years, due to the small number of questions, the question sets were confidential). Therefore, civil servants can easily find and learn related questions, which is the basis for improving their professional capacity, serving daily work.

This year is also the first time that candidates can take an online exam with the same structure and question bank as the official exam. Therefore, the more civil servants review and practice tests, the more familiar they will be with the questions and achieve high results in the official test.

In addition, the organization of capacity assessment exam helps create a learning movement for civil servants to have a better grasp of their profession, helping to handle work more accurately and professionally.

302 candidates selected from the contest of the General Department of Vietnam Customs

It is expected that from now to November 2023, the Customs Reform and Modernization Department will coordinate with units to complete the capacity assessment at all 35 local customs departments, with the number of candidates about 5,000 civil servants who do not hold the leadership positions.