Una élite de alto funcionariado profesional para el siglo XXI

This article presents a normative model of requirements for the optimal development of a high professional civil service elite, as a main dimension of governance: 1) Commitment to serving the public good; 2) Professionalism; 3) With an ethical code which goes further than merely preventing corruption or reducing conflicts of interest; 4) Reflecting society; 5) High civil service needs to develop a generic knowledge in the following new fields: main environments and their dynamics; general trends of geoeconomic, geostrategic and technological changes; main national policy issues; multiple language and computer skills, numeracy; a national historical trajectory with a vision of the future to come; ethical reasoning and political philosophy; etc. Finally, a number of measures are suggested, both for the short and the long term. Among other proposals, references are made to modifying career patterns, to restricting active service to a ten year period which may then be extended, to innovative university programs and to creating schools speciapized in public policies and devoted to training this elite grou