Section 5.1 of the Public Service Act requires the Merit Commissioner to monitor the application of merit by conducting random audits of appointments to, and from within, the public service. The audits must assess whether:

a) the recruitment and selection processes were applied properly, resulting in appointments based on merit; and

b) the appointed individuals possessed the required qualifications for the position.

The Office's annual audits have focused on appointments that form the regular, long-term workforce of the BC Public Service. These appointments include permanent appointments and temporary appointments that exceed seven months - those that are required by section 8 of the Public Service Act to be the result of a process in which individual and relative merit are assessed. Auditing the processes on which these appointments are based reveal the most information about the application of the principle of merit and public service hiring practices.

Although an assessment of applicants is not required for direct appointments under section 10 of the Act, they are included in the annual audit to ensure three criteria are met: the appointment must be based on the principle of merit; there must be unusual or exceptional circumstances; and the appointment must be approved by the Head of the BC Public Service Agency.

To obtain an unbiased picture of the application of merit across the public service, the appointments selected for audit are both random and representative. The random sampling process is administered by BC Stats. BC Stats' report "Random Selection for Merit Performance Audits", prepared for our office annually and published in our annual report, describes the appointment population for the applicable year's annual audit and explains the method that was used to make an audit selection from those appointments.

Based on documentation and other evidence provided by the organization to support the appointment decision, the auditor reviews the steps and decisions made throughout a selection process to determine whether the merit principle was upheld - that employees were appointed through a fair process, without political influence. Considered during the audit are basic hiring policy, collective agreement and statutory obligations. Read more.

To ensure the necessary level of rigour and objectivity in reviewing the application of merit, the annual audits are conducted in accordance with generally accepted professional audit standards using methodology reviewed and supported by government's Internal Audit and Advisory Services, Ministry of Finance. Our annual audit program is reviewed annually by Internal Audit and Advisory Services.

The Commissioner uses qualified performance auditors who are trained to ensure the same standard of review is applied to all audit files.