Assessing the capacity of the team leaders that are both good at professional knowledge and management skills

	Party leader emphasises improving leadership in new period
	GDVC officially organizes the test on team-level leadership assessment
	Training on leadership and management skills for senior leaders of Vietnam Customs

Mr. Luong Khanh Thiet

The General Department of Customs has organized a capacity assessment for Customs officers at 35 customs departments of provinces and cities. What's new with this team-level leadership assessment?

In the two years of 2018 and 2019, the General Department of Customs developed and implemented a capacity assessment of nearly 5,000 civil servants who do not hold leadership positions working in the main professional areas of the General Department.

The evaluation results are relatively positive, classified into 4 different proficiency levels, 0, 1, 2, 3, serving as a basis for the General Department to implement a number of training and retraining activities, arrange, and assign the right people to the right jobs.

Following the above success, in 2023, the General Department of Customs will organize a capacity assessment of team leaders under the Sub-department and equivalent in 8 main professional areas: Management supervision, import and export tax, anti-smuggling, inspection Post-clearance audit, Risk management, Violations handling, Inspection and examination, from the General Department to the provincial and municipal customs departments.

Compared with the implementation of the capacity assessment of civil servants who do not hold leadership positions (hereinafter referred to as civil servants), this time the Team-level leadership assessment has many innovative contents, specifically as follows:

First of all, the target of this time assessment is the team leader, this is the first level of management staff in terms of professional expertise of the Sector.

Therefore, the first new point is that besides the assessment of professional competence, the General Department of Customs also conducts the assessment of leadership and management competence for this team. Depending on the leadership level, the duration of each assessment session is also different.

Specifically, the Team Leader level and equivalent will do the assessment of professional competence in 36 minutes and leadership in 24 minutes. For the vice-captain level and equivalent, the time for professional training is 48 minutes and for management leadership is 12 minutes. The total time to do these two assessments is 60 minutes, done in the 1 shift as for civil servants.

The next new point is about the sets of tests of ability assessment. In previous years, due to the small number of questions, the topics were confidential. This year, using the method of formulating a principled question, all sets of questions are publicized with all questions, correct and incorrect answer options, and the number of correct answers in the question is the same in the Decisions issued by the General Department of Customs. Candidates can easily find and learn these questions, which are the basis for improving professional capacity, as well as management and administration work, serving daily work.

The third new point is about the method of constructing the set of topics. If in previous years, the General Department of Customs built multiple-choice questions, a question with only 4 specific answer options, leading to the situation that candidates can memorize without understanding, remembering the correct answers.

This year, to overcome this situation, with a multiple choice question there will be many correct answers and many incorrect answer options, these answers are combined together to create a combination of 4 different answer options in each test. Thus, with a principle question, there will be many questions with different answer layouts, leading candidates to be required to grasp and understand the original professional content in order to do the test.

Can you tell me more about the purpose of this Team leader-Level Leadership Assessment?

In 2023, the organization of team level leadership assessment has the following three purposes: First of all, the General Department of Customs wants to create a learning movement, to form a sense of self-study in each civil servant to train and improve professional qualifications, leadership and management capacity.

In order to prepare for the assessment period, the team leaders who are in charge of the main and key professional positions of the General Department of Customs have been trained not only in professional process documents but also in leadership skills. For example planning skills; assignments, authorization; making decisions; lead a team, etc. Thereby helping Team leaders to have a better grasp of the profession as well as the skills to help them manage and run their work better.

Secondly, the implementation of team-level leadership assessment will help the General Department of Customs determine the actual capacity of the contingent of civil servants leading the Team to promptly develop a training plan to supplement the knowledge and skills of these officers. Thereby helping the General Department to build a team of leaders who are good in both expertise and management, meeting the requirements of today's reform and modernization of the Sector. This is considered a premise for the assessment of leaders at Divisional, Sub-department and equivalent levels of the Customs sector.

In addition, the organization of team-level leadership assessment also helps the General Department of Customs to initially apply in a number of staff organization activities such as training, arrangement, dispatching, etc to ensure the right people and the right jobs; contribute to improving the capacity of civil servants and increasing work efficiency.

What is the significance of this implementation of Team Level Leadership Assessment for the implementation of the Customs Development Strategy to 2030, sir?

In order to realize the overarching goal identified in the Customs Development Strategy to 2030, the Customs sector has identified 7 key tasks, including building a capacity-based human resource management model, based on jobs with a wide range of applications in building the job placement system, professional competency framework by job position, payroll determination, training by job position, capacity assessment of officials and employees and application to the contents of personnel organization, etc, which is one of the important work to complete this key task.

Assessing the competence of Customs officers is a fundamental mission in building this model, in order to determine the current capacity situation as well as contribute to improving professional qualifications, and especially with the team leaders and the equivalent under the Sub-department, it is also to improve leadership and management skills, thereby enhancing the ability to complete tasks.

Thank you Sir.