POLB50Y3 Chapter Notes -Merit System, Pulitzer Prize For Public Service, Spoils System
22 Nov 2012
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Public service commission: the central personnel agency of government designed to police the merit system and ensure that partisanship is kept out of the regular public service. The central agencies that complicate the life of a department include the public service. The public service commission is a three-member board that safeguard the principles of competence, non-partisanship, and representation, and that is theoretically in charge of all hiring, promotions, and dismissals. In practice, however, the psc delegates much of its authority to deputy ministers in individual departments. It is primarily concerned with policing the merit system that is, preventing appointments and promotions from being made on partisan or discriminatory grounds. Political patronage: making appointments to public offices or rewarding government contracts on a partisan basis. For about 40 years after confederation, the canadian public service operated on the spoils system, under which the party that won an election could replace those holding civil service position with its own friends and supporters.
