Announcing and running an open or closed competition for a vacant professional civil service position is a multi-step, tightly regulated process for a public institution. Every step — from publishing the vacancy and amending the announcement to forming the competition commission and handling Bureau monitoring — is governed by the rule on conducting competitions, and a departure from that rule weakens every decision subsequently taken against candidates. This page brings together the core legal requirements a public institution must observe when organising a competition and which, in practice, become the main object of legal support.
Announcing the competition and the Bureau's pre-publication check
A public institution announces an open or closed competition for a vacant professional civil service position through the website administered by the Bureau — www.hr.gov.ge — and this is the mandatory publication channel. The institution may additionally place information about the announcement on its own website, and in the case of an open competition also on relevant job-related websites, social networks and print media, but such additional placement cannot replace the requirement to publish on the Bureau's website. Before publication, a preliminary control mechanism applies: before publicly publishing the vacancy, the Bureau checks the requirements established for the position to be announced and, within a period of 3 days, determines their compliance with the legislation of Georgia. If the requirements do not comply with the legislation, the Bureau establishes a flaw within the same period and notifies the public institution, and the vacancy is published only after the institution has eliminated the flaw. It follows that the correctness of the requirements is not merely an internal matter for the institution: it is checked in advance, and no announcement is possible until the flaw is remedied.
What the competition announcement must contain
The announcement of an open or closed competition is not free-form text: the rule requires it to contain a list of the documents to be submitted and the following data:
- the name of the respective public institution;
- the title of the vacant professional civil service position to be filled through the competition;
- the basic, special and additional qualification requirements imposed on the candidate;
- the functions determined by the job description of the position;
- information about the salary of the position;
- a list of the application and other necessary documents, and the deadline for their submission;
- information about the form of assessment of the candidate;
- the address of the respective competition commission;
- the stages of the open and closed competition;
- the deadline for the commission to adopt its final decision and information about the form in which the decision is adopted.
By decision of the public institution, other information may also be reflected in the announcement. At the same time, additional qualification requirements are established by the head of the institution in agreement with the Bureau, taking into account the specifics of each position and the content of its job description. This means that setting additional requirements is a matter of bilateral agreement: without the Bureau's consent such a requirement cannot be regarded as established. Accordingly, where additional requirements appear in an announcement, verifying their validity starts with checking whether that agreement exists.
Technical correction or substantive change
The public institution may introduce into the announcement a technical correction and/or a substantive change, and any such amendment is made in the same manner as prescribed for announcing the competition itself. A special regime applies to substantive changes: introducing one means that the public institution announces a new open or closed competition. In that case the institution is obliged to send, by email, information about the substantive change and the new deadlines of the competition to those candidates who had already applied before the change was introduced. The candidate is then given at least 10 working days to submit a new application. A practical risk hides here as well: if an amendment is in fact substantive but is presented as technical, candidates receive no information about the new deadlines — which is why correctly classifying the character of the amendment is decisive.
The public institution's rights and duties
When organising a competition, the public institution bears a whole set of rights and duties that frame the legality of the process:
- announce the competition on the website administered by the Bureau;
- introduce into the announcement a technical correction and/or a substantive change;
- eliminate the flaw established by the Bureau where the requirements do not comply with the legislation of Georgia;
- reflect information about the results of the competition in the respective module of the Bureau's website;
- terminate the announced competition and notify the Bureau and the candidates thereof;
- exercise other rights and duties provided for by the legislation of Georgia.
Termination of the competition is allowed where the public institution is being reorganised or liquidated, is merging with another public institution, or where there are insufficient budget funds and/or another unforeseen objective cause. This list itself delimits the boundaries of the possibility to terminate: without one of the grounds provided for by this norm, termination no longer rests on a legal basis.
Forming the competition commission: chairperson and composition
To ensure the holding of an open or closed competition, a respective commission is created in the public institution. It is created by the head of the institution for the purpose of selecting candidates for the defined vacant positions. The chairperson of the commission is a first- or second-rank professional civil servant of that institution; if all first- or second-rank positions in the institution are vacant, the chairperson is a first- or second-rank servant of another public institution with relevant experience. The number and composition of the members are determined by the chairperson in view of necessity, deriving from the specifics of the vacant position. The commission includes a representative of the human resources management unit, a representative of the structural unit in which the vacancy exists, a representative of the sectoral professional union of servants (where it exists), and an independent invited specialist and/or a specialist of the respective field who is not service-connected with the institution. As a rule, the representative of the structural unit should be a servant of a higher rank than the position announced under the competition; where no such servant exists, the regulation providing for the appointment of the chairperson from another institution applies. By decision of the chairperson, the institution's officer responsible for gender issues may join the commission's work without voting rights. The chairperson appoints a deputy from among the members, who replaces the chairperson in his or her absence. Finally, an important guarantee: a candidate may not be a member of the commission that is to select him or her.
Bureau oversight and monitoring
In order to ensure the compliance of the commission's composition with the legislation and the protection of the principles of the competition, the Bureau is entitled to request, at any time, information and documentation about the composition of the commission. Where a violation is discovered in the course of determining the compliance of the composition, the Bureau addresses the chairperson with a recommendation to correct the composition; if the violation cannot be corrected, the Bureau reflects this in the report to be submitted to the Prime Minister of Georgia and the Public Service Council. The Bureau's representative has the right to attend the competition held in the institution for monitoring purposes; he or she may become involved in the competition on the basis of the institution's reasoned demand or by decision of the head of the Bureau. On the basis of the institution's request, the head of the Bureau decides on the representative's attendance at the competition as needed. When attending, the representative prepares a report on the course of the competition and submits it to the head of the Bureau. The whole cycle of the competition is thus controlled from both sides: on the one hand, through the pre-publication check of the requirements, and on the other, through monitoring of the commission's composition and the course of the competition.
What legal support covers
For a public institution, legal support means verifying each of the links described above: whether the competition has been announced through the proper channel and together with requirements pre-checked by the Bureau; whether the announcement contains all the necessary data; whether the character of an amendment introduced into the announcement has been correctly classified and the corresponding communication with candidates carried out; whether the commission's composition meets the requirements established by the rule; and whether, in the event of termination, a permitted ground exists and notification has been given to the Bureau and the candidates. It is precisely at these points that the results of a competition become contestable, so checking them in advance spares the institution the cost of repeating the process.