ICS

Position:
public servant - job or privilege?

Serbia

Unfortunately, mathematics, as objective and exact science, has been used here to make changes quickly, to improve the estimated criteria in the number of those who will stay in the state administration in operational terms and to achieve the necessary savings. This objective science has given field for a subjective assessment of those who should remain and those who have to leave. It has replaced theses, since the focus of the reform of the state administration has separated the state administration from those who make it, so reform instead of systemic solutions dealt with individual numbers and surpluses.

It must be acknowledged that the years behind us, from the public service, instead of the privilege of work for the most important employer in the country, have created a "forced refuge" for a significant number of those who are, but also those who did not deserve to work in the administration, that they were created all the necessary conditions for public service employment to be a "lifelong job" rather than a category that improves and changes, that public service jobs are work descriptions, not professions. However, the employer (state) determined such conditions, defined such procedures, established the rules, and above at all promoted the public service as a "safe employment", rather than a place of work which is important and crucial for a functioning of a country.

All this has led to new divisions. First, a public opinion was created that unskilled, lazy and incompetent people are working within the public service, who not knowing how to do their job, as well as do not work at all. Secondly, a civil servant, in his personal defense to defend himself/herself from such a group qualification, began to separate himself/herself from the institution for which he/she worked, supporting this attitude "from inside", which only confirmed the public's assumptions.

At the same time, two (none) dependent processes took place. The first, which led many professionals in this field to distance themselves from this attitude or abandoning state administration or assimilating into the mass of those who work in the public service, and not for the public service. Second, in the direction of personally promoting and emphasizing personal merit of individuals. The result of these processes has been imposed individually, in contrast to the collective goal, which negates the basic postulate of the state administration, which is a systemic, team-based and synchronized creation and implementation of the state organization of a country.

The collapse of the importance of creating and implementing public policies, passing laws and normative frameworks, law enforcement, professionalism in delivering quality service to citizens and the economy has ceased to be a privilege, but a job of those who are "left over." And in accordance with that reputation, behavioral models have been established.

With such a reputation of state administration, it can not be systematically developed and becomes an unattractive employer for all those who will in the future seek professional challenges in this field. The state administration must always be above a public servant, but not by constantly repeating the credibility of the system as a whole on examples of individual abuse, and indicating that no one is outside the law (that is clear), but by promoting the importance of state administration, create the conditions for a public servant job to become a professional privilege again, and not just a place of work.

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Author: Milica Jovanović, Senior Consultant on Public Administration Reform in Human Resources Management in Public Administration, Active Participant in Public Administration Reform in the Republic of Serbia on Projects of the World Bank and UNDP, she has been engaged in processes for improving the management of companies of different sizes and the ownership structure in the Western Balkans, she is the author of two books, lives and works in Serbia