Contenu du sommaire : Fonction publique : les statuts à l'épreuve de la gestion.

Civil Service Regulations and Modernization of the Civil Service : Real Issues and False Debates. The current debate on “civil service regulations” is not free from ambiguities and conceals some of the real issues involved in the modernization of the civil service. The civil service regulations are wrongly blamed for most of the rigidities and constraints dogging staff management : excessive reliance on seniority, insufficiently individualized pay scales, absurdity of the staff report System, impossibility of penalizing poor performance, the postings and transfers System. The causes should be sought in the way the large organizations are run and in the heavy burden imposed by budget constraints. The civil service regulations offer in themselves an extremely wide, and unused, margin for manœuvre. Their abolishment or amendment should, therefore, not be made into a precondition for much-needed modernization of the civil service.

The Civil Service and Social Efficacy. Between the lack of realism of the liberal position and an apology of the State, there is room for clear analysis and proper control of the modem functions of the State as far as the search for social efficacy is concerned - a complex objective which goes beyond the highly limited one of cost-effectiveness. Neither economie assumptions nor multiple-criteria assessment are good enough for deciding or evaluating socially effective action. The public sector should set an example and provide the lead in the search for efficacy. For the public sector is and ought to remain the seat of scientific and technological progress ; a laboratory for the exercise of greater rationality in the choice, management, and evaluation of public policy ; and a place where a high degree of even-handedness prevails in the State's relations with the governed. It is important to reaffirm and defend the French approach to the civil service, which is today confronted from the inside by social challenges and political criticism and threatened from the outside by the European dimension.

Civil Servants : Depersonalized Personnel. The malaise in the public sector reflects a real identity crisis among civil servants. Until recently, the civil service regulations established identity. They were seen as inseparable from the public service, and as guaranteeing at one and the same time the protection of public servants and the effectiveness of the civil service. The current debate on the State's effectiveness seriously criticizes the “general and impersonal” status of civil servants which is prescribed by the civil service regulations and the concept of the “depersonalization”. The civil servant finds his identity being called into question, especially in three highly sensitive areas : access to the civil service, procedures for exercising the right to strike, and wages policy. In the last analysis, it appears that only an “overhaul of the public service” will allow civil servants to recover their identity and give the aims of “personalization” and differentiation any real chance of success.

The Logic of Civil Service Regulations and Working Procedures, and Forward Planning of Human Resources in the Civil Service. If the civil service regulations have an in-built logic designed to strike a balance between human resources and needs, the logic of the public sector's working procedures introduces an element of rigidity in the way this balance is achieved, both in the short and the long terms. Strong swings in recruitment have a baleful effect on recruitment levels and careers. A full-fledged forward management policy is thus called for.

Appraising the Contribution of Staff to Organizational Effectiveness : a Vital Issue for the Public Sector. The rapid changes with which the public sector must cope should lead it to ask to what extent it is able to match the objectives of modernization with proper management methods. One such method, the periodic staff report, has corne under strong fire from both the interested parties themselves and the people in charge of human resources management, who see it as a factor impeding much-needed change in the thinking and practices of governmental organizations. The introduction of a staff appraisal scheme, and therefore of a method for evaluating the real contribution of officiais to the effectiveness of the public service appears to be, in the circumstances, an issue of strategie importance.

The Experience of the Ministry of Works : Reform of the Periodic Staff Report System as Part of a Policy of Modernization. As part of its modernization programme, wich includes a full-fledged corporate plan, the Works Department is developing a policy for the modernization of its human resources management. Since the success of this programme hinges on the allocation of much greater responsibility to officiais, the Ministry of Works has set to overhaul its periodic staff report System for Grade A officials with a view to making it into a management tool at the service of a policy of modernization and optimization of human resources. The new System is based on the assessment interview and enables the results achieved to be appraised each year against the yardstick of fixed objectives.

Human Resources Management in the Public and Private Sectors. Today, human resources management (HRM) is structured around the development of a collective capability, the search for individual commitment, and the management of the problems associated with employment. HRM is an organizational response to an environment in crisis. The changes taking place in the administrative sector's environment can oniy provide a spur to reform of human resources management if the administrative authorities adopt an open attitude to this environment, while drawing on their human potential and “company culture” to hammer out a project and mobilize staff. The civil service has advantages : security of tenure, cultural homogeneity (the culture of public service), and experience in collective policy-making. To handle this opening properly, personnel management could be developed along three lines : increasing inflows of staff from other sectors, encouraging mobility between regions, professions, specializations, and countries, and using existing collective capabilities to promote a more decentralized administration.

The Modest Elite (Urban Municipals Officials on the Right Course). The development of the municipal civil service has been marked for some 15 years by a considerable increase in the humber of staff, a substantial intake of young blood, an improvement in the level of qualifications, and a diversification of career opportunities. Over the next decade, however, this modernization will have to be carried out in distinctly less favourable circumstances, marked by a block on promotions. Much will have to be done then to make careers attractive, with in-service training and the reduction of cleavages between the different branches of the municipal civil service claiming priority.

The ‘cadres d'emploi' and Career Development of Local Civil Servants. The laws of 1983 and 1984 provided for the incorporation of local government officials into a single, all-embracing civil service System. The law of 13 July 1987 reforming the service regulations of the local civil service substituted the ‘cadres d'emplois' for the ‘corps de fonctionnaires'. The ‘cadres d'emplois' : while maintaining the career principle allow for management diversity and autonomy, thereby recognizing the special position of the local authorities and their staff. A detailed analysis of the way in which this new System works shows that under these conditions the career System is not incompatible with the requirements of modem management of local authorities. Before criticizing the career System, il would be wise to remain mindful of the opportunities it offers local authorities, opportunities which are ail too often ignored or vitiated. In many cases the civil service regulations are made into a scapegoat for non-existent or poor human resources management. The onus is on local authorities to show that they are capable of proper human resources management.

The 1954 Service Regulations for ‘OPHLM' Staff : the Illusion of Administrative Particularism. Before their incorporation into the local civil service, the staff of the ‘offices publics d'HLM' were governed by their own set of service regulations. While these mies provided the advantage of maintaining a tightknit culture that was bound up with the offices' membership of an organized professional environment, it had the disadvantage of encouraging distortions between the salaries of ‘office' staff and those earned by municipal officiais. Much was therefore expected from the incorporation of ‘office' staff into the local civil service. However, the outcome fell well short of expectations : the upgrading does not go far enough and the new training scheme is ill-adapted to the specific professional character of the offices. Incorporation into the local civil service is therefore felt by the majority of the offices today to be an added burden on staff management.