Tumabekov E.A. – Head of the Civil Service Department of the Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan for Civil Service Affairs in Zhambyl region.
In the minds of most people in any civil society and in almost any social system, when assessing the activities of the state apparatus, the latter is often called "a cumbersome, unwieldy, inefficient source of "administrative arbitrariness". Therefore, the goal of any reforms in public administration is to make the state apparatus "efficient, compact and working", since it is indisputable that we need an effective and clear technology for the development, adoption and execution of decisions.
At the same time, the legal approach to ensure the quality of decisions is insufficient due to the banal lag of regulations from life and the impossibility of covering the entire variety of life situations.
Regulatory legal acts set the upper and lower limits on limiting the activities of an official, but often do not define it. There are technologies in the world that focus on the substantive aspects of the problem, however, there are not yet any that would guarantee the quality of decisions made and their effectiveness to an official. Such is the visibility of the current situation from the ordinary man in the street.
But it is worth looking at the world through the eyes of an official, as the bulky, ugly, clumsy and inefficient apparatus disappears, and we will see a beautiful, efficient, compact and self-supporting system that is reliably protected from encroachments on its more or less comfortable existence.
In addition, in addition to economic considerations, it is necessary to take into account the psychology of civil servants, their interests, goals and existential needs as a large and influential group.
At the same time, the institutions of work in the private sector and service in the public sector are rooted in modern concepts, and they directly or indirectly take into account the peculiarities of our national culture, history and traditions.
The words "service" and "serve" have numerous meanings that distinguish them from the words "work" and "work" respectively. For example, it is possible to say about a civil servant that he "does service", but it is absurd to say that he "does work"; on the contrary, when talking about a miner that he "does heavy physical work", it is unacceptable to say that he "does heavy physical service".
According to the explanatory dictionary of V. Dahl, "service is use, benefit, benefit, life for others, a service, a useful thing; to serve is to be proud, to be fit, useful, to be an instrument, a means to an end, to go into business, to be needed."
In public service, the key concept is "position", which is based on the verb "must", reminding of duties. Meanwhile, the English equivalent of "position" speaks more about the position in the organizational structure (according to V. Dahl's definition, a position is an "official place").
Every day thousands of Kazakhstanis go to work, some to public service. Both occupations have a lot in common: the obligation to perform certain official duties, the existence of rights, at least, to perform them, responsibility for their actions, material remuneration, regulatory and legal regulation of activities. There are also significant differences. For example, a private sector employee is entitled to a salary for the work done. In more detail: wages, or wages for labor. If they pay for work, it means that the more the employee has done, the more he should receive as compensation for his physical and mental efforts. From here it is not far to the conclusion that an employee of the private sector should not have a salary ceiling.
At the same time, the salary of a civil servant is called the official salary, which, despite all the changes adopted, is strictly fixed. It turns out that the main way for a civil servant to improve his financial situation should be to make a career.
In order for an official to be able to perform his official duties, he is given the necessary powers. At the same time, the presence of some power opens up the possibility of abuse of it, therefore, unlike an employee of the private sector, the legislation establishes specific restrictions for a civil servant.
The scope of restrictions is determined from contradictory requirements: on the one hand, they should prevent abuse of power, and on the other – not to interfere with the performance of official duties. Having taken away some rights from employees with the help of restrictions (some categories of civil servants sometimes even constitutional ones), sufficient, from the point of view of the legislator, compensations in the form of benefits, privileges, guarantees are offered to balance the system.
Thus, unlike private sector employees, to whom the employer compensates for physical and mental efforts, civil servants have the right to count on compensation for unpleasant restrictions for them.
It is logical that the greater the compensation, the greater the number of civil servants will refuse to abuse their official position and, conversely, the smaller the compensation, the more officials will violate the law.
Based on the above, the essential differences between "work" and "service" follow from the fact that they always work for someone, and serve something. The analysis of these concepts allows us to come to non-trivial, perhaps indisputable conclusions, however, they are still used to optimize the reform of the public administration system in many countries.
Accordingly, any branch (or profession) of human activity has its own professional or memorable day (holiday), especially one that has a huge impact on the quality of life of its citizens, as a public service.
The UN General Assembly, in its resolution 57/277 of March 7, 2003, decided to declare June 23 as the United Nations Public Service Day.
The document calls on Member States to organize special events on this day to highlight the importance of public service for the life of society and its contribution to the development process, to award civil servants, as well as to orient the vital interests of young people in the direction of making decisions about the career of a civil servant.
In order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, "Governments should use innovative and integrated approaches to promote policy reforms, institutional coordination, inclusive decision-making, and effective, responsible, inclusive and accountable public service delivery systems." The leadership of our country, the Republic of Kazakhstan, has also been engaged in extensive and painstaking work in this direction for many years!