مرحباً بكم في الأمم المتحدة 
Whereas the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated over the past months the crucial need on the part of governments to accelerate innovative breakthroughs and digitalisation to respond to the crisis, it has also revealed the vital importance of the public-sector workforce in essential fields. In all countries, this pandemic has brought back into the limelight the public-sector personnel that remain indispensable to save lives and provide basic services to the confined population, i.e. nurses and hospital workers, public health personnel, transportation operators, sanitation workers, nursing homes employees, cleaners, home assistants for the elderly, etc.
More than ever, their dedication and continuous presence has been of the essence to maintain not only the public health services necessary to fight the pandemic and reduce the mortality, but also to preserve the minimum community services needed by the most vulnerable people and the solidarity due by governments to the communities that risked being left behind.
It has shown that keeping communities together was part of an effective governance in times of crisis and that the most humble tasks performed by public sector employees at the lowest level were critical.
This category of public sector workers (so-called “street-level bureaucrats”) has sometimes been identified as a possible victim of future technological innovation. The fight against COVID-19 has demonstrated that their jobs will not disappear. On the contrary, technological improvements will need to be accompanied by human assistance from dedicated people who will perform these humble tasks needed to assist in particular the most vulnerable communities. It would be ironic to cut the services most needed to resist in times of crisis, whether it is in the public health, security or transport sectors.
In many countries today, the public-sector employees needed to maintain the basic services used by the population are the less paid and the attractiveness of their jobs is losing ground. They generally don’t receive financially the recognition that the population has often been keen to offer them in singing and waving at windows during the pandemic. Governments will thus have to deal with the necessity to reconsider the way these public servants are recruited and paid, their careers managed and their vital contribution to an effective public sector appraised.
One necessity unveiled by the pandemic could well be for governments to review the situation of the lower level public servants. The scale value of the indispensable workforce used in times of crisis might have to be changed. The merits of the less qualified pubic-sector workforce will have to be recognized and the public-sector workforce of the future will need to include and acknowledge the true value of the core public jobs.
Emmanuelle d’Achon, Member of the United Nations Committee of Experts on Public Administration