No. 42-43 (2002): Administrative careers and governance

The issue of governance is currently at the top of the global agenda. Its raison d'être is the examination of governmental deficits in an environment of unprecedented speed of change, which requires institutions to adapt to new rules in order to respond to society's demands.

Its notion has become intertwined with the concept of good governance, with the idea of the rule of law and democratic institutionality.

It is associated with a minimum characteristic of effective and efficient management by the State, which is why public administration is one of the essential instruments for the governance of a country.

Therefore, the intention of helping to raise the quality of public action, through the strengthening of society's own capacity for self-government, are aspects that can undoubtedly be decisive in the arduous task of building an environment favorable to stability and development.

In this sense, the Inter-American Development Bank, IDB, has been reiterating in recent years that "there is a direct relationship between economic development and the quality of the governance process". Therefore, governance and development are interacting factors, and institutional development is an essential component of it.

Efforts in this regard have been crystallized in the framework of State reforms, aimed at revising public organizations, both horizontally and in the context of sectoral areas, with particular relevance to reforms of public employment in general and the Civil Service and Administrative Career, in particular.

Consequently, the civil service, the Civil Service and the Administrative Career constitute government policies that lead to an explicit recognition of their relevance, in relation to the fact that they are essential instruments to help democratic governance.

Hence the importance of the Seminar on Administrative Careers and Governance, which took place within the framework of the "XI Meeting of Directors of Civil Service and Human Resources of the Central American Isthmus", promoted by the Forum of Directors of Civil Service, jointly with the Central American Institute of Public Administration, ICAP, in its capacity as Technical Secretariat, held in Panama, Panama City, from August 20 to 23, 2002, with the fundamental purpose of opening a debate to retake the sense of institutionality in the Central American public administration, whose contributions we make available to our readers today.

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