Abstract
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Independence, democratic changes in Lithuania have substantially influenced government in terms of its structure, functions and forms of organization. It was evidenced by rapid disintegration and collapsed of the former nomenclatural system of training and in-service training of public servants. New arrivals in the state’s political and administrative institutions have raised new problems related to their qualification and professionalism. The main are:
- System structure’s correspondence with the quantitative needs in the field of public servants’ training;
- System structure’s correspondence with the qualitative needs in the field of public servants’ training.
In order to satisfy the needs of public service, a totally new system of training and in-service training of public servants is required; a system that would be highly flexible and able to predict tomorrow’s needs and conform without delay.
One of the system’s structural parts are universities, which equip students to successful work, giving them knowledge from politics, government, economics, computer science, psychology, etc. – all this knowledge is essential for a public servant.
The other part of the system is comprised of various institutions that provide in-service training (including those which specialize in language teaching, computer literacy, etc.).
It seems that these two parts of the system should guarantee satisfactory solution of the previously mentioned problems, i.e. one part (universities) prepare qualified specialists and take active part in helping them to integrate into the public service (almost all Lithuania’s universities have career centres), while the other part (institutions and universities that specialize in in-service training) provides specific practical knowledge.
At the beginning of Lithuania’s restored independence it was relatively easy to compose a primer government and to organize training for rather numerous fresh public servants, especially that the content of training programmes was based on a prior needs, without having conducted a research concerning the needs. This is one of the reasons why there is no harmony between the “academic” and the “practical” parts of the system. Discord within the system is worsened by the fact, that the great number of institutions which provide in-service training compete among themselves and care about having good profit rather than providing quality services and satisfying public servants’ real needs.
Due to these reasons, the system of training and in-service training of public servants fails to meet qualitative requirements, whereas political, economic and social context, in which public servants operate, is undergoing rapid and considerable changes.
An important condition for maintaining state identity and ethnic mentality in the new European space is preserving one’s national identity. This fact raises a new qualitative requirement for public servants: using only democratic measures, they must create and legally consolidate conditions, which would allow sustaining ethno cultural, social and economic interests of different communities that have developed in the course of history.
Under these conditions the system of training and in-service training of public servants faces one more qualitative requirement – to form and foster a set of democratic and other values for public servants that would increase their efficiency, as well as to preserve and cherish ethnic and cultural values, which would help to maintain the country’s national identity.
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