HK opens 2 top civil service jobs to outside candidates for first time. Will this shake things up?

HONG KONG – Hong Kong has for the first time launched an open recruitment exercise for two senior roles in its civil service as it signals a desire for reforms, but it remains to be seen if this will be smooth sailing.

If private-sector candidates are successfully found to fill the two director positions – in its information services, and food and environmental hygiene departments – it would break a longstanding tradition of appointing only career administrative officers to the top roles within the civil service.

The recruitment exercise announced on Feb 11 is reportedly aligned with Chief Executive John Lee’s repeated promises since he took the top job in 2022 to reform the civil service and improve governance in Hong Kong.

It comes in the wake of a string of botched attempts to push out new policies that have opened up the authorities to a slew of public criticism.

Analysts view the move as a positive step to experiment with expanding the talent pool within the government, but say suitable candidates may not be so easily found.

The vacancies are for the director of the Information Services Department (ISD), and director of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD).

The monthly salary tagged to these roles is between HK$287,990 and HK$296,535 (S$46,500 to S$48,000), excluding allowances and housing benefits, according to the government’s notices posted online.

Both positions seek candidates with “strong political acumen” and the ability to “embrace (and) drive change”.

The ISD role also requires “strong intellectual ability” to lead the department of about 450 people in “projecting an accurate image of the city within and outside Hong Kong”.

The FEHD role, meanwhile, calls for “sound knowledge of the government system and administration of substantial financial resources”, as well as “solid experience in staff management and law enforcement work”. The department has a headcount of about 11,400 people.

The open recruitment exercise comes as the government on Feb 11 announced a reshuffle of its senior civil servants.

Among the changes, incumbent information services director Apollonia Liu will assume the post of permanent secretary for security on March 30. The announcement did not say where incumbent food and environmental hygiene director Donald Ng would be headed.

Both posts have been staffed by career administrative officers since Hong Kong’s handover in 1997, and it marks the first time they are being opened to the public, the local media reported.

The government’s move to open these positions for public recruitment is a “positive indication”, according to Worldwide Consulting Group managing director Armstrong Lee.

“It’s definitely a good start to think about its talent pool beyond just the existing civil servants,” said Mr Lee, who specialises in headhunting for senior roles in large companies.

However, recruiting a private-sector candidate for the FEHD role would be “challenging”, he told The Straits Times.

“The talent pool for the ISD role is straightforward and will most likely be from top management in the media sector. But the FEHD position is trickier as its job scope is very wide, covering areas including food hygiene, market management and licensing enforcement,” he said.

Beyond the immediate job scope, “it won’t be so easy” to find private-sector candidates who are familiar with and experienced in handling government protocols, on top of being highly politically sensitive to community feedback, he added.

Dr Felix Yip, associate director of the Hong Kong Baptist University’s Centre for Human Resources Strategy and Development, is not optimistic that the FEHD role can accommodate a candidate from the business sector.

The “narrow criteria” calling for at least 15 years of management experience and sound knowledge of government systems, as well as experience in law enforcement, mean that “anyone who has never worked in the civil or public service will be eliminated”, he said.

“It gives the impression that the government already has a preferred candidate in mind.”

The open recruitment exercise is a part of the government’s plan to reform the civil service, online news outlet HK01 reported, citing unnamed sources. But it does not mean outsiders will necessarily be hired to staff these posts, it said.

The government has faced brickbats over its botched attempts to push out new policies, and its ineffectiveness in implementing and communicating changes.

Most recently in early February,

officials received flak for making an abrupt U-turn on a policy requiring all seated bus passengers to wear seat belts

after a former lawmaker’s discovery that the legal wording did not mandate using seat belts on almost all existing buses.

In May 2024, officials were slammed over a last-minute decision to drop a plan to charge residents by the amount of trash they generate after repeated delays, confusion and HK$74 million already sunk into producing special plastic bags for the levy.

Hong Kong’s leader, Mr Lee, in his policy speech in September 2025, said

he would set up an accountability system for the civil service’s heads of department

to improve governance by instituting a system of consequences for when problems occur, and to maintain public confidence in the authorities.

New blood hired through the open recruitment process is seen as a way to help address these problems.

The waste-charging plan was overseen by the Environment and Ecology Bureau, to which the FEHD reports.

The department’s next new policy awaiting roll-out as early as June is a proposal to allow pet dogs into as many as 1,000 restaurants in the city. The policy would relax a longstanding rule banning dogs from food premises since 1994.

The new directors who take on the advertised FEHD and ISD posts hence will likely play an important role in respectively implementing and communicating these changes to the public.