The Senior Civil Service and the Career System

EARLY in 1955, former President Herbert Hoover was asked to name the most important of the Second Hoover Commission's 314 recommendations. Mr. Hoover is reported to have replied without hesitation: I would pick the recommendation for the setting up of a senior civil service. . . That is why our Report on Personnel and Civil Service is the nearest to my heart.' President Eisenhower has characterized the recommendation for a Senior Civil Service as one of the most far-reaching and imaginative proposals made by the Commission.2 An offspring of the career system concept, the idea of a Senior Civil Service has a long and honorable lineage. However, the proposal has generated a great deal of controversy in both official and unofficial circles since 1955. By early 1956 the U. S. Civil Service Commission had designed an for agency consideration. But there was disagreement as to whether a start should be made through the necessarily limited scope of an executive order, as the interim plan envisioned, or through a direct legislative attack on the problem. It also became clear that the proposal, then as now, was receiving its main support from top level political executives in