No. 54-55 (2008): Professionalization of the Civil Service

In the mid-twentieth century, Central America considered it pertinent to organize the management of human resources at the service of governments, instituting regulations, structures and programs that would make it possible to create an institutional framework aimed at responding to social demands with efficiency, efficacy and effectiveness, such that in all the member countries of the Civil Service Forum of the Central American Isthmus, Panama and the Dominican Republic, there are bodies in charge of the Civil Service, the Civil Service, the Administrative Career and/or Human Resources Management, with different degrees of progress and different hierarchical levels.

Currently, with the need to strengthen "good governance", the efforts to increase institutional capacity and productivity and the response to citizen demand with quality, the importance of the professionalization of the civil service has been taken up again, not only by the reform and modernization of the State in general, but by the public servants themselves and civil society in particular, since there are a number of reasons to ponder the relevance of this body of civil servants in national and sustainable development. Thus, the training of public servants is today a current and permanent issue on the agenda of public administration and especially of the Central American Institute of Public Administration, ICAP.

For democratic governance, the career or professionalized Civil Service represents not only an expression of governmental institutionality, but also a deepening of the process of building democracy, strengthening both the managerial capacity of the different areas of public administration and their decentralized execution. On the other hand, a systematic improvement in the management and development of public servants increases productivity in the public sector, contributing to the action of governance. 

Notwithstanding the above, the member countries that are part of this Forum face some challenges in order to make progress in the creation of a professional career service, which I will briefly mention below:
a) To comprehensively articulate the professional career service for the entire public administration.
b) To guarantee that in the transition due to the change of power, the experience and knowledge of the personnel will be taken advantage of, and that the administrative operation will not be interrupted, forgetting the traditional practice of the old political interference.
c) To provide the citizen with certainty and credibility with respect to the exercise of the public function.
d) To improve government action, both in terms of coverage and quality of the goods and services provided.