The nature of civil service promotion examination is exceptionally special. It is an examination conducted specifically for the incumbent civil servants. As only an incumbent civil servant is eligible to take the examination, it is an examination of limited competition, rather than an examination of open competition. Besides, in the scoring for a participant, his/her performance evaluations of the latest 3 years would be included, taking up 30% of the total score. Further, in terms of the criteria of passing the examination, the best 33% of the all-courses-taking examinees could pass it for each category at each rank in a protective manner. Such an examination, comparing with the civil service examination for initial employment, indeed seems to be quite favorable for the incumbent civil servants. With respect to the institution of category and the decision for test courses of the civil service promotion examination, its charging agency has been for years making plans based on the ranking criteria and instructions on series. It invited the employing agencies, scholars and experts to participate in the course of study. However, due to the egoistic thinking of governmental agencies and the consideration of scholars towards academic specialization, the number of categories for civil service promotion examination is bulking up rapidly. When there are 101 categories for the senior rank, there are 134 categories for the junior rank, which have produced an enormous amount of tiring examination work. The Ministry of Examination, aiming to improve the civil service promotion examination, therefore conducted a questionnaire survey over the in-service civil servants. Among the questions were about the abolishment/sustenance of the examination, adjustment of the way, inclusion/exclusion of the general courses, and increase/decrease of the professional courses. In this regard, the concept of core working capability was specifically adopted. It is anticipated that the core capability of the senior rank and the junior rank would be established through the extensive collection of opinions of the in-service civil servants, and suggestions on the improvement of the way and test courses of the civil service promotion examination may be thereby proposed. In addition, by referring to the revised "Table of Names of Sections and Series" submitted by the Ministry of Civil Service to the Examination Yuan for review, we have also proposed suggestions on the establishment and mergence of categories of promotion examination for the senior rank and junior rank.