No. 46-47 (2004): Reforms and Modern Trends in Public Employment Management

State Reform programs in Central America include among their agenda items, support for the creation and revision of the existing Civil Service Systems in the Region. This topic acquires relevance in the framework of the democratization processes and the rule of law, as the Civil Service Regime contributes to deepen the institutional framework that guarantees the professionalism and objectivity of public officials, including respect for the principles of equality, merit and stability.

In this sense, the "XII Meeting of Directors of Civil Service and Human Resources of the Central American Isthmus: Civil Service Reforms in Central America and Modern Trends in Public Employment Management", organized by the General Directorate of Civil Service of the Secretariat of State of the Presidential Office of the Republic of Honduras, jointly with the Central American Institute of Public Administration, ICAP, in its capacity as Technical Secretariat of the Meetings of Directors of Civil Service and Human Resources of the Central American Isthmus, and held from July 27 to 30, 2004, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, had the purpose of reviewing the modernization efforts promoted by government authorities in this area, whose debate and comparative analysis provided the following lessons:

- The advances in the revamping and strengthening of the Civil Service Systems in the Central American area are still relatively modest.

- The concept of Civil Service admits multiple interpretations, and its application has given rise to the design of a variety of institutional systems, which are related to different theoretical and cultural traditions.

- The notion of civil service is nowadays more relevant, since it has a double dimension, referring both to a management sphere and to the body of personnel that performs it.

- The Civil Service contributes to increasing the quality of public policies, which require a degree of professionalism, expertise and stability of a set of technical-administrative human resources.

- The importance of the Civil Service is manifested in the continuity of management, and in the capacity to respond to the increasingly growing and complex needs of the Central American population.

In the current context of the challenges of transparency, productivity and satisfaction of social demands, the Civil Service appears as a priority institution to safeguard the credibility of the effectiveness of the democratic State. However, in its reform process, important dilemmas arise, which the governments of the Area have to address in order to retake the sense of institutionality in public administration, as can be seen in the material presented in these two issues of the ICAP Journal, which we make available to our readers today.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)