The announced 2009 Working Group on Civil Service is the new WG within the NISPAcee. We would like to start cross-countries discussion and encourage people from different countries holding different backgrounds to present and discuss variuos models of civil service, commonalities and differencies among CEE states comparing to Western countries.
Background and justification:
In the 21st century, demographic developments, growing expectations from citizens, the introduction of new technologies, individualization, delegation and decentralization, financial pressures and internationalization trends have become the determining factors of change in the public service. Today, reform measures promote the deconstruction and the decentralization of the civil service at all fronts. In addition, public policies are administered through increasingly complex networks, decentralized governance structures, public-private partnerships and cooperative ventures between NGO's, consultants and Government (Ch. Demmke). The traditional concept of the public service as a single, unified employer is also disappearing. Instead, the introduction of individual performance schemes and the decentralization of responsibilities in Human Resources Management (HRM) make the public service a rather heterogeneous and fragmented body. Contrary to this, for a long time the single employer concept was vital to the development of centralized public personnel systems. A government rather than its individual agencies, was the employer. Accordingly, the employee was a career civil servant rather than a worker (D. H. Rosenbloom/R. S. Kravchuk).
In the past years, many areas of the public sector have lost this uniqueness and have become quite similar to the general employment system. What is interesting us from the CEE point of view: does it mean that the idea of a civil service as a specific structure is outdated all over the Europe, at least in some countries, does it also happen to New Member States. How the situation looks like in candidate countries?
There are now as many different categories of public employees as there are different public functions and organizations, and the term "civil servant" now is more difficult to define than ever. Modern civil servants have very different tasks, positions, legal relationships and working conditions in various European countries.
A civil servant or public servant is a civilian career public sector employee working for a government department or agency. The term always includes the (sovereign) state's employees; whether regional, or sub-state, or even municipal employees are called "civil servants" varies from country to country. That is why for the purposes of our WG we would like to use this broader sens of meaning "civil service"
Many consider the study of civil service to be a part of the field of public administration. Workers in "non-departmental public bodies" (sometimes called "quangos") may also be classed as civil servants for the purpose of statistics and possibly for their terms and conditions. Collectively a state's civil servants form its Civil Service or Public Service.
In the 2009 our goal is to start disscussion and make general overwiev of civil services in CEE countries. We hope to continue this job next years going in depth in this field.
In Budva:
For our WG in Budva we various very interesting papers which we want to listen at and to discuss. The topics are grouped in:
1. Overviews and comparative studies
2. Law regulation
3. Training
4. Education
5. Reform and instruments
Perspective:
Of course it is not sufficient to discuss the papers only. At the end of the NISPAcee annual meeting we want to have a clear understanding of the way foreward of this working group and a documentation. The documentation of the first WG meetings gives us the possibility for further work and for book writung later on.
