(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)