THE ROLE OF THE PUBLIC SERVICE IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT*

I was invited to give an address on the topic “The Changing Role of the Public Service”. With the agreement of the organizers I have changed my title to “The Role of the Public Service in a Changing Environment”. That is a small change—but it is a significant one. Our role has not really changed. It is easy in the public service, as elsewhere, to be preoccupied with contemporary challenges, and to imagine that these are new and different. But that says more about the way memory discounts the past than anything else—the latest problem or challenge is always the worst. When I joined the Treasury in 1952 the economy had just come through the Korean War boom and was in the process of adjusting to Fadden's so-called “horror” budget. The world financial system was in disarray owing to the “shortage” of US dollars. The Arbitration Court in the two or three previous years had made some awards of great concern as to their inflationary consequences. I found the Treasury was a hive of frantic activity. Looking back from the perspective of today I merely note, as the French put it, that the more things change the more things stay the same.