Improving Public Administration Performance Demands Investment in Human Resources

This paper emphasizes that investments in human resources are one of the important factors for improving public sector performance. In strategic papers of Slovenian government and during the reform process of public administration, government stressed that human resources are one of the most important factors for improving performance. This is originally the point of this research. The main hypothesis of the presented research is that investments in human resources improve efficiency and effectiveness of the public sector. For several reasons explained in the paper, tax administration was chosen to test the hypothesis. We used a number of training participations per employee as an indicator of investments in human resources. For determination of efficiency and effectiveness, we used selected performance indicators and surveys among taxpayers about their satisfaction. The main obstacle of the research is that series over long periods are not used for a better test of the hypothesis, since surveys among taxpayers are not regular. The results indicate a positive correlation between training and performance indicators, and training and taxpayers' satisfaction