Brief information, but potentially considerable work
Discrete reform could significantly change the structure of the Lebanese administration. The State is moving towards the abolition of approximately 10,000 vacant posts in the public sector. The jobs concerned would mainly belong to the lower ranks of the civil service. The advanced justification is based on economic viability studies which conclude that some of these posts would no longer be necessary if the administration continued to digitize and automate procedures. At this stage, the available evidence does not identify a definitive list of departments, administrations or occupational categories affected. Nor can they state that a final decision on exactly 10,000 posts has already been legally adopted. The figure should therefore be read as the order of magnitude of a project in preparation, not as the notification of 10,000 immediately enforceable deletions.
This precision completely changes the social reading of the file. A vacancy is not a terminated official. Removing a job that is not occupied means removing it from the organizational chart or giving up filling it in the future. The immediate impact on active employees is therefore very different from that of a redundancy plan. On the other hand, the structural impact can be major. The state organization charts determine future recruitment, competitions, careers, division of labour and human resources available in the administrations. The removal of several thousand posts is thus tantamount to redrawing part of the State for the following years. That is why the real question is not whether 10,000 people will lose their jobs. The available information does not support this interpretation. The question is what public functions the State now believes it can perform with fewer staff.
Why the lower grades are the first involved
The fact that the positions concerned would concentrate in the lower grades gives an indication of the philosophy of reform. These are generally the levels that bring together a significant part of the functions of execution, capture, document circulation, administrative reception, archiving, repetitive processing of files and support tasks. These are also the functions most directly exposed to dematerialization when a service moves from paper to digital. A computerized registry can reduce copying. An online procedure can reduce the number of physical crossings at the counter. A digital payment system can remove several manual steps. Thus, automation does not eliminate administration, but alters the nature of the tasks required.
However, too fast a conclusion must be avoided: scanning a procedure does not automatically prove that a post has become useless. A digital administration needs agents able to control data, process exceptions, assist users, secure systems, verify fraud and ensure continuity of service when tools fail. Some of the execution jobs may disappear, while new needs arise in computing, data analysis, cyber security or control. The viability studies referred to in the file are therefore becoming crucial. To be credible, they must measure the tasks actually removed by digitisation and not simply apply an accounting goal of downsizing. The available information does not yet provide their methodology or breakdown by administration.
The figure of 10,000 must not be confused with 10,000 dismissals
The distinction deserves to be repeated because it will determine the public perception of reform. The project covers vacant jobs. By definition, they are not currently occupied by 10,000 staff who should be dismissed. Abolition of these budget lines would mainly reduce the theoretical capacity of the State to recruit on these budget lines. It could also end administrative maintenance of obsolete organizational charts. In some jurisdictions, staff structures were designed at a time when each operation required much longer physical records, copies, records and signature circuits. Maintain these positions indefinitely in the staffing tables only if the corresponding functions still exist.
But the absence of immediate redundancies does not mean the absence of social issues. Public posts are historically a way of access to employment for part of the population. Removing them reduces the prospects for future recruitment in the categories concerned. The reform can also change the balance between incumbents, contractors and other forms of public employment if the State abolishes statutory posts while continuing to purchase external benefits. The risk would then be to reduce the official organizational structure without actually reducing expenditure, simply by moving tasks to contracts or providers. There is no indication in the available information that this scenario is foreseen. This is precisely one of the points that a detailed plan will have to clarify.
Budgetary reform as administrative
The elimination of vacant posts has a budgetary interest that exceeds the immediate saving of wages, since unfilled posts do not necessarily cost their full remuneration today. The stakes lie in future expenditure. Each position retained in an organizational chart represents an opportunity for recruitment, followed by salary, contributions, career progression and long-term commitments. By removing jobs deemed to be useless, the State limits the future recovery of a wage bill based on old needs. This logic can be consistent in a country seeking to rebuild its public finances. However, it is only relevant if the deleted posts are actually obsolete.
The danger would be to use digitization as a general justification for a reduction that would not take into account the quality of service. Administration can cost less while becoming less accessible. Citizens with poor digital skills, older people or those without stable access to online services may need human support. The reduction of windows must therefore be balanced against the real level of digitisation of the country and the ability of public platforms to operate without interruption. Successful reform is not measured by the number of posts abolished, but by the cost and time it takes for a citizen to actually obtain his or her document or service.
The real test: remove tasks before removing jobs
The order of operations will be decisive. The most reliable logic is to digitize a procedure first, to measure its functioning, and then to see what human tasks have actually disappeared. Proceeding in the opposite order would pose a risk: removing positions on the assumption that future automation will make them unnecessary, before the digital system is able to replace them. In such a scenario, the administration could find itself with fewer staff and still incomplete tools. The reform would then create digital queues instead of physical queues. The available evidence suggests that the proposed deletion is linked to the condition of a mechanization orientation. This condition must remain central.
Scanning should also be distinguished from simple electronic reproduction of paper. Putting a form on a screen is not enough if the user must then print the document, obtain several physical signatures and move to different offices. Staff savings actually occur only when the entire chain is redesigned: identification, deposit, payment, verification, signature, archiving and issuance. A reform of the workforce without reform of procedures would leave the bureaucracy intact while reducing the human resources available to manage it.
Organizational charts to be reviewed by department
The overall figure of 10,000 posts does not yet indicate where most of the planned abolitions are located. This is an important limitation of the file available. No sufficiently detailed breakdown is provided by department, institution or type of function. It would therefore be imprudent to announce that such administration would lose such a number of posts. On the other hand, the very logic of sustainability studies involves administrative analysis. The needs of a civil registration service are not those of a technical ministry. The needs of a central government differ from those of a territorial service. The same technology can significantly reduce tasks in one sector and almost not in another.
This breakdown will be one of the most important documents to be considered when the reform takes on formal form. It will make it possible to distinguish a genuine restructuring from a uniform cut. Modern administration is not necessarily a smaller administration everywhere. It may need fewer agents in one function and more in another. Scanning can remove input stations while requiring system specialists. It can reduce manual processing while strengthening control needs. If the state simply removes jobs without redeploying skills, it risks keeping shortages where they already exist and eliminating the capacity it will need later.
The risk of a State digitised on paper but still dependent on paper
The credibility of the project will also depend on the digital infrastructure. An administration cannot base its staff on platforms that operate intermittently. Electrical continuity, networks, data centres, computer security, backups and inter-jurisdictional interoperability become components of the public service. Removing a position because an operation is automated amounts to considering the computer system as such an essential infrastructure as an office or archive. The State will therefore have to finance the maintenance, updating and protection of these tools. Savings on payroll can be cancelled if digital systems are poorly designed or need to be replaced frequently.
Equally important is the issue of interoperability. If each administration builds its own platform without being able to exchange data with others, the citizen will continue to transport information from one service to another. The bureaucracy will simply have changed its support. For the deletion of repetitive functions to be justified, data already held by the State must be able to be reused legally and securely. This implies rules on data protection, access to files and liability for errors. The information available on the 10,000 posts does not detail these aspects. They are the technical conditions without which the announced economy would remain theoretical.
An opportunity to break the link between public recruitment and clientelism
Finally, the reduction of vacancies has a political dimension. Public employment has long been integrated into Lebanese power relations. Recruitments, competitions, contracts and appointments have often been issues between political forces and communities. Reducing the number of unnecessary posts can therefore limit the stock of jobs available for future recruitment motivated more by political balances than by the needs of the service. This possibility explains why apparently technical reform can become politically sensitive as soon as the precise list of jobs concerned is known.
But the opposite effect is also possible if the reform is not transparent. Statutory posts could be abolished while contractual recruitment would continue elsewhere, with fewer rules and controls. Modernization would then become a means of circumventing rather than correcting old practices. To avoid this risk, the State will have to publish the criteria used: missing tasks, volume of files, expected productivity gains, cost of maintaining the post and new needs created by digitization. Without this data, the figure of 10,000 will be easily used in the political battle, as each side may accuse the other of eliminating or protecting jobs for partisan reasons.
A reform that must also say what jobs the state wants to create
A modern workforce policy cannot be limited to abolishing. It must also define the competences the State wishes to acquire. While digitization reduces requirements in certain functions, it mechanically increases the value of profiles capable of designing, administering and securing new systems. The administration will need engineers, data specialists, IT security experts, controllers and personnel who can support users. The question therefore becomes that of an exchange between old and new jobs, not that of an abstract reduction in the number of civil servants.
It is also a question of generation. Removing thousands of entry posts without opening new qualified recruitment channels can speed up the ageing of administration. An institution that no longer recruits ends up losing its skills when experienced agents leave. Conversely, artificially retaining posts that have become useless blocks resources that could fund new profiles. The reform must therefore combine abolition, redeployment and targeted recruitment. The available file does not yet indicate whether this architecture accompanies the 10,000 posts project. It should be sought in implementing decisions.
The figure is spectacular; the details will decide whether the reform really is
At this stage, the solid fact is limited but important: the state is moving towards the elimination of about 10,000 vacant posts, mainly in the lower grades, on the basis of viability studies which consider that they would no longer be necessary if digitisation progressed. It would be misleading to go further and present as established lists of departments, specific budget savings or a timetable that are not included in the available items. The subject deserves to be followed because it opens a much wider project than this first information suggests.
Reform can become one of the most important transformations of the Lebanese administration if it is based on real task mapping and functional digitization. It can also be reduced to an accounting operation if the figure of 10,000 becomes an objective in itself. The difference will be seen in future documents: which positions, which administrations, what automated functions, what savings, what new recruitments and what quality of service indicators? As long as these responses are not public, caution remains necessary. But one thing is already clear: by deleting vacant posts rather than waiting to fill them, the state is starting to decide not only how many agents it wants to employ, but what kind of administration it still wants to have.
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