civil service
civil service
civil service
civ′il serv′ice
n.
| Noun | 1. |  civil service - government workers; usually hired on the basis of competitive examinations |
| 单词 | civil service | |||
| 释义 | civil servicecivil servicecivil serviceciv′il serv′icen.
civil(ˈsivl) adjectivecivil servicecivil service,entire body of those employed in the civil administration as distinct from the military and excluding elected officials. The term was used in designating the British administration of India, and its first application elsewhere was in 1854 in England. Modern civil service personnel are usually chosen by examination and promoted on the basis of merit ratings. In democratic nations recruitment and advancement procedures are designed to divorce the civil service from political patronage.HistoryGeneral DevelopmentThe use of competitive examinations to select civil officials was begun in China during the Han dynasty (206 B.C.–A.D. 220), and expanded to include all important positions during the Sung dynasty (960–1279; see Chinese examination systemChinese examination system, The establishment of the modern civil service is closely associated with the decline of feudalism and the growth of national autocratic states. In Prussia, as early as the mid-17th cent., Frederick William, elector of Brandenburg, created an efficient civil administration staffed by civil servants chosen on a competitive basis. In France similar reforms preceded the Revolution, and they were the basis for the Napoleonic reforms that transformed the royal service into the civil service. Development of a professional civil service came several decades later in Great Britain and the United States. In the United StatesOwing doubtless in part to the spoils system so strongly established in the Jacksonian era, the United States lagged far behind other nations in standards of civil service competence and probity. Agitation for reform began shortly after the Civil War. In 1871, Congress authorized the President to prescribe regulations for admission to public service and to appoint the Civil Service Commission, which lasted only a few years. The scandals of President Grant's administration lent weight to the arguments of reformers George W. Curtis, Dorman B. EatonEaton, Dorman Bridgman, The assassination of President Garfield in 1881 by a disappointed office seeker precipitated the passage of the Pendleton Act in 1883, reestablishing the Civil Service Commission after a nine-year lapse. The commission draws up the rules governing examinations for those positions that Congress places in the classified civil service. All Presidents since Cleveland have expanded the classified list, and the great majority of federal employees during peacetime are now classified. In 1939 the merit system was extended to sections of state administration receiving federal grants. The Hatch Act of 1940 forbade campaign contributions by officeholders, with the intention of divorcing the civil service from politics. A 1993 revision of the act allows most civil servants to engage in political activity on their own time. Appointive power is shared by the President, who appoints the heads of all government departments and may remove his appointees at will; by Congress, which controls its own employees; and by the Civil Service Commission and departmental-appointing officers, in whose charge are vacancies in the classified service. Important changes were made in the structure of the U.S. civil service as a result of the reports issued (1949, 1955) by the two commissions known as the Hoover Commission. The organization of the government bureaucracy was streamlined by the creation of the General Services Administration, combining the operations and activities of some 60 government agencies. In Other CountriesOf the world's civil services, the most outstanding on several counts is still the British, extremely powerful because of its permanency, its extensive grants of power from Parliament, and its reputation for absolute honesty, although it is criticized for a lack of flexibility and for class exclusiveness in its upper ranges. A Civil Service Commission and the beginnings of a system of competitive examinations were established in Great Britain in 1855, and the influential Whitley Councils, representing both government employees and administrators in questions dealing with service conditions, were set up after World War II. British civil servants are strictly excluded from politics. In Communist nations, on the other hand, the official party and the civil service have tended to interpenetrate. The secretariat of the League of Nations and of the United Nations are possible precursors of an international civil service. BibliographySee W. A. Robson, The Civil Service in Britain and France (1956); P. Van Riper, History of the United States Civil Service (1958); E. A. Kracke, The Civil Service in Britain and France (1968); F. C. Mosher, Democracy and the Public Service (1968); A. Gartner et al., ed., Public Service Employment (1973). civil servicecivil serviceCivil ServiceThe designation given to government employment for which a person qualifies on the basis of merit rather than political patronage or personal favor. Civil service employees, often called civil servants or public employees, work in a variety of fields such as teaching, sanitation, health care, management, and administration for the federal, state, or local government. Legislatures establish basic prerequisites for employment such as compliance with minimal age and educational requirements and residency laws. Employees enjoy job security, promotion and educational opportunities, comprehensive medical insurance coverage, and Pension and other benefits often not provided in comparable positions in private employment. Most civil service positions are filled from lists of applicants who are rated in descending order of their passing scores on competitive civil service examinations. Such examinations are written tests designed to measure objectively a person's aptitude to perform a job. They are open to the general public upon the completion and filing of the necessary forms. Promotional competitive examinations screen eligible employees for job advancement. Veterans of the Armed Services may be given hiring preference, usually in the form of extra points added to their examination scores, depending upon the nature and duration of their service. Applicants may also be required to pass a medical examination and more specialized tests that relate directly to the performance of a designated job. Once hired, an employee may have to take an oath to execute his job in Good Faith and in accordance with the law. Unlike workers in private employment, civil service employees may be prohibited from certain acts that would compromise their position as servants of the government and the general public. For example, the federal Hatch Act (5 U.S.C.A. § 7324 et seq. [1887]) makes participation by federal, state, and local civil service employees in designated public electoral and political activities unlawful. The U.S. Civil Service Commission, created by Congress in 1883 and reorganized under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (5 U.S.C.A. § 1101 et seq.) as the Merit Systems Protection Board, established a merit system for federal employment and governs various aspects of such employment, such as job classification, tenure, pay, training, employee relations, equal opportunity, pensions, and health and life insurance. Most states have comparable bodies for the regulation of state and local civil service employment. civil servicein the constitutional law of the UK, servants of the Crown who are permanent and do not change with a political change of government. There is no definition of a Crown servant. A subordinate who is employed by a civil servant is a servant of the Crown and not of the person employing him. Recruitment and examination, for many the insignia of a mature and independent civil service, have for over one hundred years been carried out by the Civil Service Commission, a body established not by statute but by order in council. Independence is supported by having pay decided by the Civil Service National Whitley Council. They may be precluded from being able to strike on grounds of national security. Civil servants have no special constitutional status separate from the minister they serve and have no right to reveal confidential information in the public interest, an issue discussed in relation to official secrets. There is a sliding scale of permission to take part in politics, the higher the official, the lesser the activity permitted.civil service
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