AQW 26856/22-27

Ms Kellie Armstrong
Alliance Party
Strangford

Tabled Date: 09/05/2025
Answered On Date: 27/05/2025
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of Finance to detail any work being carried out to make the Northern Ireland Civil Service recruitment processes more flexible in order to fill the number of vacancies across all Departments more effectively and efficiently.

Answer:

ANSWER

In the last year my Department has filled over 3,000 vacancies across the Civil Service to support departments.

The NICS has recently launched its People Strategy for 2025 -2030. One of the key initiatives of this strategy is to simplify and streamline the recruitment process to ensure we continue to recruit the best people and address capability gaps ensuring a continued supply of talent in the Civil Service. This work has commenced with several improvement initiatives and a review of relevant HR Policy already underway.

Work is also progressing to design future processes to support the implementation of a new integrated Finance and HR system as part of the Integr8 programme.