Professional Development of State Civil Servants: Current Practices and Challenges

Professionalism and competence are two of the fundamental principles of the state civil service, influencing the well-being of society. Therefore, a strict system of continuous professional development of the state civil servants (SCS) is required. The purpose of this study is to identify the main trends and problems in the organization of professional development of the SCS in the Russian Federation. The paper assumes that this process is not systematic and does not comprise key organizational stages. And the system of professional development is presented by only standardized additional professional education (APE). Within the empirical study, a qualitative analysis of the documents and an expert interview were carried out. It has been revealed that most federal state bodies do not conduct the initial stage of the training needs analysis, which affects the objectivity of the last stage of summarizing results and the success of the whole process. Another part of the results shows that other development activities (seminars, trainings, service internships and others) have been already actively implementing by the federal government bodies. Consequently, there is a transition from a standardized APE system to a system of continuously professional development of the SCS, capable of solving the identified problems.