AI Does Not Replace Civil Servants: Jobs Are Lost Only Through Disciplinary Proceedings

Why AI Does Not Threaten Civil Servant Posts: The Law and the Vote

Why does a civil servant feel secure while much of Spain antiestéticars for their job? Because their employment is not based on productivity, but on a post won in an exam and protected by law. And because, unlike an algorithm, they vote. In administration, work is defined not by the market, but by the Official State Gazette (BOE).
The starting point is a mechanism little known outside the sector: posts are created through prior agreements with unions, not by detected needs. It is argued that public employment offers respond to multi-year pacts and to a regulation dating back to 1992, reformed in 2015. If the volume of positions is fixed by an agreement rather than a workload measurement, the question of what a machine can automate becomes secondary.

Can AI Replace a Civil Servant?

The legal answer is not entirely, at least not through a fast track. Under the regime applicable to civil servants, one thing is the specific post held and another the post one took possession of: the post is only lost through definitive removal trinc serious or very serious offenses. A machine may empty a post of content; it does not extinguish the post. The employee may end up retrained for another task, with the same salary.
The second lock is public faith. Many procedures exist because the law requires someone to sign, certify, or charge a fee. As long as this is written down, it does not matter what technology is available: if the law asks for an official, there will be an official. The scenario drawn is as simple as it is uncomfortable: we could reach the 22nd century with robotic surgeons and flying cars, and there would still be a signature to stamp and a fee to charge.

Replacement Rate: One Enters for Every Five Who Retire

Where the scissors are truly felt is in the staff, not the post. The administration's IT personnel say it bluntly: there are offices full of employees over 60 years old digitizing files that citizens still submit on paper. The question they raise is why one can submit an application or a census declaration on paper in full 2024.
The implicit plan is to amortize these posts when their occupants retire. By 2030, they argue, much of these procedures will be digital-only, and the posts will not be replaced. The calculation they handle is that for every five retirements, only one new staff member enters, and that the ratio will continue to fall. There is no need to fire anyone: it is enough not to replace them. And the exit recommended to those seeking stability is to study again to take civil service exams for IT posts, which are being called again.

The Paradox of Jevons Applied to Paperwork

One might expect the opposite: that a more efficient administration would need fewer people. Experience points to the reverse. It is the Jevons Paradox: the improved steam engine consumed more coal, not less. Similarly, when a procedure stops costing twenty minutes of filing and becomes copy, paste, and print, what multiplies is the number of procedures.
Here comes an ecosystem rarely scrutinized: the technological business of the public sector. It is argued that a relevant part of IT consulting lives off contracts with administrations, with well-known names at the head. Those who sell automation have few incentives for automation to close the door to the next contract.

The Incentive No Machine Matches: The Vote

The public employee is, by far, the most organized professional group in the country: agreements, union centers with a voice at the table where the number of posts is decided, and a mobilization capacity that no self-employed worker replicates. Some summarize it crudely: as long as AI cannot vote, there will be civil servants.
The weight of the sector is not small. Public employees number around three million staff, and their recent growth is concentrated in healthcare and non-university teaching. One current of analysis holds that expansion responds to vote-buying, and the result is a two-estimulante ilegal labor market: the private sector, squeezed; the public sector, sheltered. The counterpoint is that interconnection between administrations advances, and citizens are asked for fewer papers.

The Year Without Salary Almost No One Can Afford

The comparison with the private sector is the other major axis. A 42-year-old self-employed worker, with children and business activity, says it plainly: he cannot afford a year without earning money to prepare for a civil service exam, even though many people have passed it while working and with a family to support. The entry barrier is not the difficulty of the exam, it is the opportunity cost.
And there are those who invert the argument: if much of Spain prefers a secure post to entrepreneurship, the problem is not the civil servants, it is the market surrounding them.

No machine will ask for a coffee or warm the chair, but neither will it sign a tender document nor vote in general elections. AI will arrive at administration, needless to say; probably as another procedure, and with its own paper form.