POSSIBILITIES OF REMEDIATION OF THE PERSONNEL SUBSTRATE OF THE SLOVAK PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Abstract

 The public perception and evaluation of the functionality of public authorities depends on the personnel substrate of public administration bodies.  The public is primarily focused on its own problems of everyday life, in the solution of which the public administration, and especially its personnel, has a share. !e work and attitudes of the personnel of public authorities towards citizens as clients receiving and using specific services provided by the public administration organisations naturally also reflect the public’s attitude towards their own statehood.  These social relations are inherently highly variable and therefore extremely fragile politically and socially. 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 revitalizing its organisational structure and institutional network, but not towards improving the functioning of the state's bureaucratic apparatus. Despite the fact that the true essence and goal of its professional activities is such administration of public affairs, which must ideally be carried out solely for the benefit of the citizens of the state. Since public administration bodies are composed of collectives of people who form an essentially heterogeneous conglomerate within 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.  The decisive place, that is to say, the guarantee and the task of fulfilling the functions attributed to the public administration by the state, therefore belongs to the work portfolios of public administration officials of all levels and types, as well as 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 qualification 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 classified according to various indicators, perhaps the most significant are those that can be conceived and monitored based on the establishment and evaluation of the achieved parameters of its population's quality of life. The quality of life for the population is also determined by the way public affairs are managed. Public administration is therefore a specific service of the state provided to the public in its interest and under its responsibility. It is consequently 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). This is why the actions of individual officials integrated into the personnel base of the public administration have a significant impact on public opinion. Therefore, the search for possibilities leading to the improvement of the quality of personnel activities in the Slovak public administration remains a topical task for both science and practice.