Years of effort have established an excellent examination affairs foundation. However, in view of societal changes, operational demands, and the desire to complement international standards and practices, the MOEX has undertaken a comprehensive review of the Examination Affairs Act and subsidiary regulations so as to establish a fully comprehensive examination system. Further, in line with revisions to examination laws and regulations and government restructuring efforts, the Organizational Restructuring Task Force was established to review the Regulations for Handling Departmental Affairs and look into ways to improve upon current arrangement of units, manpower allocation, division of labor, and procedural rationale towards organizational revitalization and effective deployment of manpower, and ultimately to raise the overall level of administrative performance.

To achieve close integration between examinations and education, training, employment, and occupational management, accommodate the operational demands of government agencies, and the professional knowhow required for development across various industries, the MOEX has identified and established various occupational indicators for civil servants and professional and technical personnel. On the basis of these indicators, MOEX takes stock of methods and approaches for improving qualification requirements, subjects, methodology, and question outlines for various national examinations so as to raise examination reliability and validity. Additionally, the Ministry aims to facilitate educational training informed by occupational indicators by educational training agencies so as to further elevate the occupational know-how of civil servants and the vocational proficiency of technical and professional personnel.

Oral examinations, psychological tests, physical fitness tests, on-site examinations, and reviews of published works or inventions are all statutory examination methods employed in addition to written examinations. However, due to cost considerations the written examination is often the single method employed. MOEX will take a diversified approach to examinations in the future, proceeding in multiple stages with strong emphasis on practical competence in the best interest of employment needs. Moving forward, the MOEX will maximize use of the Internet, professional journals, overseas fact-finding visits, and participation in academic exchanges to collect and study information on examination techniques and approaches at home and abroad. Further, the MOEX shall contract with academic institutions or professional organizations to engage in related research to develop diversified scoring methods aimed at evaluating core competencies required across various professions, and will also give consideration to outsourcing the administration of select Professional and Technical Examination categories to enhance the validity and breadth of recruitment and selection.

In the effort to augment a qualitative and quantitative question bank containing diverse question items, in addition to selecting frequently used and important subjects, the Ministry has developed a question item plan. Apart from setting up a comprehensive question item bank consistent with ideal testing models, provisional items shall employ question drafting and review procedures by committee to minimize question item disputes. In addition, employment of information technology and incorporation of international standards will give the item bank information system test information exchange, management, and search capability with various international testing systems, enabling the sharing of international grading resources while promoting the use of on-line item drafting systems to ensure examination item quality.

Taking advantage of the rapidity and convenience of information technology, the MOEX shall set up an integrated National Examination affairs management system, fully incorporating the system support functions at all stages in the examination affairs workflow, and refining examination affairs tasks at every juncture via the information system’s verification mechanisms towards the objective of zero defects. Further, the MOEX endeavors to streamline work procedures through system simplification, interconnection and integration to boost administrative performance. Of prime importance, to ensure the security of operational and administrative information, the Ministry has established an examination affairs information operations environment that meets ISO/IEC 27001 international information security standards, raising information security to the highest level to facilitate the promotion of computerization and automation of examination affairs.