The decline in public trust has precipitated a "quiet crisis"in the federal civil service.
2 The recent report of the National Commission on the Public Service, more commonly referred to as the Volcker Commission after its chair, Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, recited a litany of shortcomings in the federal personnel system.
3 Although no comparable evidence is available on the status of state and local government civil service systems, they no doubt have suffered problems similar to those experienced at the federal level.