Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 19th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview Civil Service Author(s) Albena Taneva Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski Sofia Bulgaria Title Being competent and being trained: Challenges for the employees in the public service File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract The paper is focused on the particular relationship between academic education and career development of graduate students in Public Administration as a transition towards a new model of public service. The results of the public sector are highly dependent not only on the regulation of this sector, but largely on the preparation of the new generation for the civil service. Preparation is understood as competence, commitment and possibility for integration within the institutional system. As the standards for the academic education in Public administration exist, the biggest challenge in this regard is the philosophy of recruitment of the new graduates in Public Administration, the transition from the academic status to the status of practitioners and the sustainable development of the established models. Quite different is the challenge for training of experienced civil servants. This issue is particularly important in regard to the standards, purposes and values which the trainer is expected to fulfill. The empirical basis of this paper is a decade experience in conducting the internships for students in Public Administration at Sofia University as well training courses on leadership for practitioners in the training programs of the Department of Public Administration. Conclusions concern the impact of the Academic internship program on the recruitment, competence, job satisfaction and sustainable career of young employees in the civil service. The paper is based on the two types of case studies: • Reports of students of the internship program of the Sofia University Department of Public Administration o Basic criticism of students, based on their experience in variety of institutions of Public administration (negative experience, symptomatic issues; most repeated skepticism in the field of “real life” to the field of Public administration) o Positive issues (good practices, successful experience) o Factors for the positive results:  the role of the leader (institutional, educational, situational)  the time factor (period of establishment and development of the programs in Public administration)  alumni factor  communication factor (intra organizational and inter institutional) • Cases, developed by civil servants, trained in the programs of the Department of Public Administration in leadership (MA programs) and in communicative skills (training programs). o What was the most needed know-how by civil servants during their training; o what are the topics picked by trained civil servants as issues for their case studies (as good and bad practices and basis for benchmarking); o What is the role of the analyzed leaders in terms of improvement of administrative service and modernization of this sector.
