Possibilities of remediation of the personnel substrate of the Slovak public administration

Abstract

!e public perception and evaluation of the functionality of public authorities depends on the personnel substrate of public administration bodies. !e public is primarily focused on its own problems of everyday life, in the solution of which the public administration and especially its personnel have their share. !e work and attitudes of the personnel of public authorities towards citizens as clients receiving and using speci"c services provided by the public administration organisations naturally also re$ect the public’s attitude towards their own statehood. !ese social relations are inherently highly variable and therefore politically and socially extremely fragile. All the more importance should therefore be attached to the personnel base of the public administration bodies by the public authorities. Public administration reforms are intended to be a means of rationalising the activities of the public administration system. As a rule, however, they are oriented towards revitalising its organisational structure and institutional network, but not towards improving the functioning of the bureaucratic apparatus of the state. Despite the fact that the true essence and goal of its professional activities is such administration of public afairs, which must ideally be carried out solely for the bene"t of the citizens of the state. Since public administration bodies are made up of collectives of people who form an essentially heterogeneous conglomerate in the form of a personnel system, albeit outwardly homogeneous, the state can in fact regulate the guarantees of its operation only to a certain extent and within certain limits. !e decisive place, that is to say, the guarantee and the task of ful"lling the functions attributed to the public administration by the state, therefore belongs to the work portfolio of public administration officials of all levels and types, other managerial employees and the executive bureaucratic apparatus. Officials employed by the state itself in the public administration must therefore meet certain personal, professional and quali"cation criteria. If these requirements are in a divergent relationship with reality, then it is not at all possible for public servants to carry out the internal and external functions of the state in accordance with the political, economic, social and cultural aims of the political power. Although the value of each state as a sovereign political form of organisation of society can be classi"ed according to various indicators, perhaps the most signi"cant are those that can be conceived and monitored on the basis of the establishment and evaluation of the achieved parameters of the quality of life of its population. !e quality of life of the population is also determined by the way in which public affairs are managed. Public administration is therefore a speci"c service of the state provided to the public in its interest and under its responsibility. It is therefore also measurable by the level of satisfaction achieved by the population with its performance. In terms of quality, the performance of public administration is almost exclusively in the hands of the apparatus of public administration bodies, their personnel base (personnel substrate). !is is why the actions of individual officials integrated into the personnel base of the public administration have a signi"cant impact on public opinion. Rersefore, the search for possibilities leading to the improvement of the quality of the activities of the personnel base of the Slovak public administration is still a topical task of both science and practice.