The Israel Democracy Institute criticizes decision to reduce search committees for public service employees from 5 to 3 and says discussions of allowing additional political appointees ‘will harm the professional ethos of the public service’

Based on the intentions of the Public Service Committee to approve the political appointments of 25 deputy director generals of cabinet ministries and the decision earlier this week to decrease the search committees for these appointees to three participants from five, the Israel Democracy Institute (ID) put out a statement calling the move a damaging process and saying it will cause great harm to the professional ethos of the public service. A study by Prof. Momi Dahan that examined 34 countries found a correlation between political appointments and lack of effectiveness of the public sector.

IDI President Yohanan Plesner said of this latest development: “While one hand in the government is taking significant steps to diminish regulation and improve human resources in the public service, the other hand is harming these efforts. The revolving door, and the common replacement of ministers, has created a situation in which in the current government more than a third of ministers have already been replaced or changed jobs. In a reality in which the average term of a minister is two years, removing obstacles to political appointments will increase instability and harm the professional ethos of the public service sector. It is acceptable to shorten the time for search committees for senior positions, but it would be a bad mistake to do this via increased politicization.”