The State of Public Service

Recently Volcker reflected on the work of the commission and on the current state of the civil service.

On public trust: I have been out of public service-at least the paid variety-for more than 10 years. I still can't convince myself that success in chasing a financial bottom line can match the potential satisfactions of public service.

Now I quite deliberately inserted the word "potential" before satisfaction. This past decade has not, on the evidence, commanded the degree of public trust and respect that really effective and committed public service should inspire. That has been true most of all in Washington. What we on the commission characterized a decade ago as a "quiet crisis" in the civil service has only deepened. Too much experience and dedication has been lost.

On political appointees: We in the United States have benefited for years from gifted "amateurs" who bring new life and initiative to government. But measured against the total numbers of political appointees, they are the minority. We have come, in my judgment, to rely far too heavily on the "inners and outers" to fill the key positions at or near the top of the public service.

On recent reforms: Pay is better at the upper levels and more responsive to different costs in major metropolitan areas. The need for decentralization in personnel administration has been recognized. Vice President Gore has helped popularize the need for administrative reform and taken some useful initiatives.

But whatever successes can be claimed, it is obvious that something has been missing-that in several key respects we have slipped backwards. Part of the difficulty is that, in an era of firm budget restraint and staff downsizing, most initiatives in career development have fallen by the wayside. Agency after agency has lost experienced professional and administrative leaders-the key career civil servants that have been the repository of experience and models and mentors for the young.

On a code of ethics: What seems to me too often missing is a strong sense of a public service ethic. We seem to lack a code of conduct analogous to the canons of legal ethics or medicine's Hippocratic Oath-a code that insists upon the priority of the general interest and a dedication beyond partisan politics to the lawful objectives and missions of the President and Congress.

Whatever the nature of the demands on government, we will need a strong cadre of professional civil servants, men and women with experience and expertise, working in an environment of promotion by merit, and in which strict adherence to political accountability, in the highest sense of that phrase, is prized. And reasonable pay has to be an essential corollary to those qualities.

On future challenges: There are no pat solutions to the new challenges, not for Presidents (or Vice Presidents), and not for civil servants. Simple slogans-reinventing government, ending the IRS, less government-may be calls to action, but they are not substantive answers. Nor will these answers be found in authoritative textbooks propounding some common doctrine.

There are, however, both glorious opportunities and formidable frustrations for those who are willing to enter the fray as citizens, as scholars and, most important of all, as practitioners.