The current state and prospects of public administration reform after 2014 year

Abstract

As for the civil service in Ukraine, we can identify a number of innovations aimed at improving the performance and ensuring the quality of civil service, namely: separation of administrative and political positions; clarification of the legal status of a civil servant; separation of civil service from political activity; establishing an exhaustive list of persons who are not subjected to the civil service legislation; introduction of a new approach to the classification of civil servants’ positions; a competency-based approach to the selection of candidates for the civil service; defining legislatively common approaches to entry, performance and separation from civil service; improving professional skills and professional training of civil servants, their labor remuneration, bonus payments and encouragement, as well as disciplinary responsibility. Reforming the civil service legislation has become the most important step towards the public administration reform. Constant changes and amendments to the newly adopted legislation signify about it imperfection. Nevertheless, it should be noted that legislators and reformers are moving in the right direction. The data analyzed in the article show that Ukraine has come a long way from the Soviet civil service legacy. However, it is still in the middle of the road: these achievements must be supported by continuous efforts to render them irreversible and significantly improve the efficiency of public administration. The analysis of the sources in the article shows that the ideal picture of a public servant should correspond to his real perception. In fact, the public perception of civil servants in Ukraine is quite negative, as people see a striking difference between the reality and the ideal mentioned above. It turned out that the public servant, according to public perception, lacked almost all the necessary features. This demonstrates the enormous problems with civil servants in Ukraine due to the mismatch between public perception and the ideal image of a public servant. Thus, statistics show that the majority of respondents (about 70 percent) said that a Ukrainian civil servant is poorly qualified, tends to avoid solving complex cases, impatiently violates the law, demonstrates low respect for customers, is not trustworthy, is biased and interested in his own interests (puts one's own interests ahead of the public), non-result oriented, etc. The article concludes that public service reform in Ukraine should be supported not only by political measures that enhance the professionalism of employees, but also include procedures for changing public attitudes towards them. The negative perception of civil servants can be closely linked to the civil service itself: Ukrainians perceive it as a corrupt and bureaucratic institution that breaks innovation, does not care about cost-effectiveness, and does not perceive positive change.