(Civil service; 03-03; p.3)
Range of changes
Since the commission has been working for the
government of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW),
its results are relevant primarily for this state - Germany is
a federal republic that consists of sixteen different states.
For its analysis focussed on procedures and outputs, it may be
applicable for structurally similar units of the civil service.
To shed some light on the dimensions of the
civil service in NRW, some data might be useful:
• NRW is with about 18 millions of inhabitants
the most populated in Germany and provides about twenty percent
of the republic's produced goods and services (gross domestic
product, GDP);
• the economic structure of this state has changed
totally from coal and steel dominated up to the seventies to diversified
sectors: nowadays about a third of the state's GDP comes from
produced goods, but more than forty percent from public and private
services and almost a quarter from trade and logistics;
• while there are about 37 millions employed
in total, there are almost five millions in the civil service
in Germany; the figures for NRW are eight millions and 0,7 millions
respectively (the latter consisting of 0,4 millions employed by
the state and 0,3 millions employed by cities and communities
in NRW); put in quotas, thus about 13 percent of German employees
are in one or another way working for the civil service, whereas
the quota for NRW is about nine percent;
• while in Germany roughly a third of civil
servants have a permanent status, in NRW almost one half enjoy
this privilege; it must be stated in this respect that the different
levels of employers go along with different tasks: state employees
are mostly working in education and vocational training, employees
of cities and communities fulfil a variety of tasks and employees
of the federal republic are mostly working - not considering soldiers
- in administration of the armed forces and tax and tax related
administration. (read on here)