The Eisenhower Civil Service and the Reformers
| Author | R. N. SPANN |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1956.tb01483.x |
| Published date | 01 June 1956 |
| Date | 01 June 1956 |
The Eisenhower
Civil
Service
and
the
Reformers
By R.
N.
SPA”
In
1953,
Professor Spann published two articles in
((
Political Studies
’’
on
Civil Servants in Washington. They were based
on
material collected
whilst he was a Rockefeller Fellow during
1950-51
and reflected the Federal
Service
as
it was
in
those years.
In
this article he reviews the happenings
and progress since President Eisenhower
took
ofice nearly
four
years ago.
He
is
now Professor of Public Administration
in
the University
of
Sydney.
T
is now nearly a quarter of a century since the last full-scale report on
I
the British Civil Service was made by an independent committee
of
enquiry.
The American Civil Service has not been so lucky, or unlucky.
It
was
investigated and criticised on more than one occasion in the thirties. The
first Hoover Commission dissected
it
in the late forties.
Now,
in the middle
fifties,
it
has been
going
through the mill again. The concIusions of these
various surveys bear a somewhat depressing similarity to one another, though
one should not ignore some significant differences of emphasis. The fact
that the same points have to be made again and again must not be taken
to mean that nothing has been done to improve the service in the last twenty
years. Such a conclusion would be far from the truth. But
it
does mean
that progress has not been fast enough; and, more precisely, it reflects
the fact that the problems which were becoming evident a generation ago
have been growing in importance and complexity all the time, so that the
public service has had to run pretty hard even to stay in the same place.
Three Recent Reports
In July,
1953,
a new Commission
on
Organisation of the Executive
Branch of the Government was created, under the chairmanship of ex-
President Hoover. The scope of its investigations was wider than that
of
the Hoover Commission set up by President Truman’. But it included the
range
of
problems affecting the organisation of the Fcderal Public Service
which had been a main concern of the new Commission’s predecessor. As
in
that instance, the Commission appointed a Task Force on Personnel and
Civil Service to make
a
detailed enquiry and submit its
own
findings
;
while
reserving the right not to accept all the Task Force’s recommendations in
its
own
shorter report. These two documents have now been published2.
About the same time, there appeared the background papers and report of
the American Assembly
on
The Federal Service
:
its character, prestige and
problems3.
The American Assembly is
“
a national, non-partisan program
of continuing conferences which brings together representatives
of
business,
labor, farm groups, the professions, both political parties, and government.”
It
was established by the President of Columbia University in
1950
;
and
at that time he was Dwight
D.
Eisenhower.
So
this report too may claim a
link with the President.
The American Assembly Report and the Task Force Report usefully
complement each other. The former is mainly a
“
background
’’
document,
143
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