Civil Service, Public Administration, Public Sector

- Civil Service.

. . . a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leadership. A civil servant, also known as a public servant or public employee, is a person employed in the public sector by a government department or agency for public sector undertakings. Civil servants work for central and state governments, and answer to the government, not a political party.

- Public Administration.

. . . the implementation of public policy, administration of government establishment (public governance), management of non-profit establishment (nonprofit governance), and also a subfield of political science taught in public policy schools that studies this implementation and prepares people, especially civil servants in administrative positions for working in the public sector, voluntary sector, some industries in the private sector dealing with government relations, regulatory affairs, legislative assistance, corporate social responsibility (CSR), environmental, social, governance (ESG), public procurement (PP), public-private partnerships (P3), and business-to-government marketing/sales (B2G) as well as those working at think tanks, non-profit organizations, consulting firms, trade associations, or in other positions that uses similar skills found in public administration.

- Public Sector.

. . . the part of the economy composed of both public services and public enterprises. Public sectors include the public goods and governmental services such as the military, law enforcement, infrastructure, public transit, public education, along with health care and those working for the government itself, such as elected officials. The public sector might provide services that a non-payer cannot be excluded from (such as street lighting), services which benefit all of society rather than just the individual who uses the service.[1] Public enterprises, or state-owned enterprises, are self-financing commercial enterprises that are under public ownership which provide various private goods and services for sale and usually operate on a commercial basis.

Street-level bureaucracy

People like me. :)

- Wikipedia.

Street-level bureaucracy is the subset of a public agency or government institution where the civil servants work who have direct contact with members of the general public. Street-level civil servants carry out and/or enforce the actions required by a government's laws and public policies, in areas ranging from safety and security to education and social services. A few examples include police officers, border guards, social workers and public school teachers. These civil servants have direct contact with members of the general public, in contrast with civil servants who do policy analysis or economic analysis, who do not meet the public. Street-level bureaucrats act as liaisons between government policy-makers and citizens and these civil servants implement policy decisions made by senior officials in the public service and/or by elected officials.

Street-level bureaucrats interact and communicate with the general public, either in person (as with a police officer doing a random checkpoint to check for drunk driving or a civil servant in a department of transportation who helps people to register a newly purchased car and provide them with licence plates); over the phone (as with a government call center, where civil servants answer phone calls from people who are applying for or receiving unemployment insurance); or, in jurisdictions which have implemented electronic government technologies, via the Internet (e.g., a person finding out about the government's taxation laws by going onto the taxation department's official website and asking questions to a civil servant via email).

Street-level bureaucrats often have some degree of discretion on how they enforce the rules, laws and policies which they are assigned to uphold. For example, a police officer who catches a speeding motorist typically can decide whether to give the driver a warning or apply a penalty such as a fine or criminal charge; a border guard who finds undeclared rum in a border-crossing motorist's car trunk can either give the person a warning, confiscate and destroy the contraband item, or levy a fine or other penalty; a government social worker who meets with an unemployed person can decide whether or not to provide social assistance or unemployment insurance benefits; and a high school principal who finds that a student is skipping school can decide whether or not to suspend the person, taking into account the student's unique circumstances and situation. Even though front-line bureaucrats have this degree of discretion, they typically must operate within the rule of law, the system of government regulations, laws and administrative procedural rules. These regulations, laws and rules help to ensure that the street-level bureaucracy operates fairly and ethically, and that each citizen is treated fairly.

Is the spoils system alive and well in Texas?

I posted a few items on the recently, but it keep coming back up on the public agenda.

The Houston Chronicle recently reported on the number of positions in Texas agencies that have been staffed by people with connections to elected officials - cronies they are sometimes derisively called. The positions are often not advertised, which is in violation of state law. A law which is seldom enforced.

Keep in mind that strategic decisions about who gets what job allows for the development of political networks that can come in handy when seeking higher office. There are reasons why this occurs - tangible benefits as well.

- Click here for the story.

The paper the editorialized that this suggests - as you all probably have always suspected is true - that is matter who you know rather than what you know. The problem is pervasive they say.

- Click here for the editorial.

. . . Texans should be glad to see their taxes spent on qualified employees instead of diverted into a spoils system, but the problem is more pervasive than elected officials hiring a few friends.

The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas was caught in 2012 handing out millions in grants without proper scientific and business reviews. It turned out that the recipients had made donations to the secretive CPRIT Foundation that boosted salaries for CPRIT officials. Closer to home, in 2013 the Houston Community College was caught up in a scandal involving a contract redirected to a politician's buddy. And earlier this year, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission came under fire for spending $30 million on scholarships for employees who had close ties to elected officials.

Even within the boundaries of the law, governments routinely grant tax exemptions or other so-called economic incentives that favor some companies over others. Sometimes these incentives are worthwhile, but they hardly take part in the sort of pure free-market philosophy that plenty of Texas politicians claim to endorse. The deeper you dig, the more it becomes clear that Texas isn't exactly a low-regulation state. We just have regulations that reward friends and punish enemies.

New upstarts, such as Tesla's electric cars, Uber and Lyft, and microbreweries, have had to fight regulatory structures that protect entrenched interests while discouraging new competition. Meanwhile, the young, the poor and the sick who could truly use help often find government assistance in Texas lacking.

So if you're a ambitious Texan who wants to lift yourself up by your bootstraps, the lesson taught by our elected officials isn't that you need to work hard, get good grades or have the best ideas. If you want to be successful in Texas, have the right connections.

And a good last name doesn't hurt, either.

The IRS staffers speak

The Washington Post interviews a few:

“We’re not political,’’ said one determinations staffer in khakis as he left work late Tuesday afternoon. “We people on the local level are doing what we are supposed to do. . . . That’s why there are so many people here who are flustered. Everything comes from the top. We don’t have any authority to make those decisions without someone signing off on them. There has to be a directive.”

The staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job, said that the determinations unit is competent and without bias, that it grouped together conservative applications “for consistency’s sake” — so one application did not sail through while a similar one was held up in review. This consistency is paramount in the review of all applications, according to Ronald Ran, an estate-tax lawyer who worked for 37 years in the IRS’s Cincinnati office.

“You’re not going to have a bunch of flaming liberals in the exempt-organizations department looking for conservative applications,” he said

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Houston has civil service exams for fire fighters

Here's a look at the civil service process on the local level. A couple thousand people went to the GRB Convention Center to take a three hour exam to join the fire department.

- KUHF: What Does It Take To Be A Houston Firefighter?
- 2,000 turn out to take Houston Fire Department Civil Service Exam.

- HFDCareers.
- Human Resources - City of Houston.

A federal worker gets defensive

And wants to stop being treated like a punching bag:

There was a time, not long ago, when government service was seen as a higher calling. That’s the reason I decided to join the State Department in 2005 — not because I wanted job security or good health benefits, but because I wanted to devote my life to making this country stronger, to making the world a better, safer place and to have a career I was proud of. Seven years later, I still get excited to come to work every morning. I still get a thrill when I enter the State Department and see the flags of every nation with which we have diplomatic relations. And I certainly get chills each and every time I see the U.S. flag on one of our embassies. I’m fairly sure I am not the only federal employee who feels this way.

So to all our politicians, I implore you: Stop using the government workforce as a political football. Just stop. It demeans you, it demoralizes us, and it is counterproductive to drive away the best and brightest from working for the betterment of this country.