GCC approves Bahrain's proposal on HR systems

Manama, Oct. 21 (BNA): Ministers and presidents of civil service in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have approved the Kingdom of Bahrain's proposal, presented by the Civil Service Bureau(CSB), on the consolidation of HR systems licenses purchases on the GCC countries. They have agreed to raise the proposal for approval at the next meeting in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2016. They adopted recommendations from the workshop of the Kingdom of Bahrain on infrastructure development in the civil service, which was held in Manama in December 2014 and directed to implement them, espesially the recommendation of forming a dedicated team to work on a comparative study about the development and modernisation of GCC civil service legislation. The President of CSB Ahmed bin Zayed Al Zayed explained that the aim of the purchase of civil service and human resources systems in the GCC is to reduce purchasing costs and increase benefit from the advantages granted for a collective bargaining between the GCC countries and major international companies specialised in human resources. He pointed out that these companies have several programmess in human resources systems such as salaries and wages, performance management, training and recruitment, manpower planning and others. CSB president said that the negotiation on the consolidation of HR systems licenses purchases will bring many advantages like continuous programmes upgrade, exchange of expertise and experiences among specialists and future interconnection of data between the GCC countries, while currently each Gulf state buys systems individually and purchase licenses according to the number of users, then renew them on an annual basis, which cost a large amount of money that will lead to inflation of manpower bill. The Ministerial meeting also came out with a package of necessary decisions and recommendations that will enhance the joint Gulf action and upgrade Civil Service system in the GCC countries, such as decisions to overcome challenges facing the civil service through taking advantage of international experiences and trends in the public sector, so as to raise productivity and change management in human resources and going towards smart services, that will speed up the processes and services. The ministers and presidents agreed to follow up and implement the decisions of the Supreme Council in the field civil service, specially the one related to the equality among GCC citizens during service, as well as adopting a project to activate the transfer and exchange of operating experiences principle among the GCC countries. The also directed to study the general framework to prepare a guide on administrative terminologies, organisation structure descriptions, and position description in civil service in the GCC countries.