"Governance and Political System" Thematic Research Series
The SAR government began to introduce the accountability system for principal officials in 2002, employing talents from the public through political appointments to serve as secretary-general and director-general positions, strengthening the responsibilities of principal officials in different policy areas, and gaining support from the Legislative Council and the public. Subsequently, the SAR government further developed the political appointment system based on the above foundation and added the positions of deputy secretary and political assistant to the secretary. The goal is to provide Hong Kong's political talents with a more comprehensive career development path. The political appointment system has been in place for 15 years. However, many anecdotal surveys show that the popularity of some politically appointed officials is not good. With social progress, increasing citizen awareness, and the increasingly complex political environment, the public has expressed concerns about the appointment procedures of the relevant system, accountability performance, personal conditions and work performance of appointed officials, and their governance philosophy. focus on.
The election of the new Chief Executive of the SAR will be held in March. During the period from being elected to taking office, the Chief Executive-elect needs to form the political leadership team of the new government. Among them, politically appointed officials will also take office in July this year; social attention and discussion on relevant issues will surely increase accordingly.
This study aims to understand the expectations of young people in Hong Kong for politically appointed officials and explore feasible suggestions for further improving the governance quality of politically appointed officials from a forward-looking perspective.
This study collected data through several aspects, including a Hong Kong Youth Opinion Survey, which included interviews with 532 young people aged 15-34, focus group interviews with 20 young people, and exclusive interviews with 5 experts and scholars. The relevant data collection was conducted from January to February 2017.
Main results of the study
- The young people interviewed have high expectations for the personal conditions for serving as principal officials, which mainly include being able to grasp public opinion (57.7 %), having a sense of responsibility (55.2 %) and having a vision for policies (41.4 %). And if there is an opportunity to communicate with key officials, 28% (28.4 %) of the young people surveyed said they would participate.
- 64.8 % young people interviewed do not believe that they trust major officials; another 43.9 % young people interviewed believe that the biggest problem of the political appointment system is the lack of supervision of officials' performance, followed by the low transparency of the appointment process, accounting for 35.2 %.
- The young people interviewed are not satisfied with the effectiveness of the current political appointment system. On a scale of 0-10, with 5 being qualified, they believe that the system "promotes the governance effectiveness of the SAR government" and "enables Hong Kong to absorb political talents more broadly". The average scores were 4.74 and 4.67 respectively.
- 34.4 % young people interviewed do not believe that Hong Kong has enough talents to fill the position of accountability officials; another 62.6 % believe that expanding the accountability team will help cultivate local political talents.
- 71.4 % The young people interviewed believe that a credible government can attract talents to join the accountability team. In addition, more than 30% and nearly 30% of the young people surveyed respectively believe that the SAR government needs to improve the transparency of employment (31.5 %) or implement the principle of meritocracy (29.9 %) to encourage talents to join the accountability team.
Research main recommendations
- Expand the scale of the political appointment mechanism and strengthen the cultivation of local talents for Hong Kong governance
- Set up policy sharing meeting for politically appointed officials
- Strengthen connections and direct communication between politically appointed officials and the public
- Inherit the governance experience and insights of retired officials and promote the optimization of the system
