The Public Administration in Spain has been facing a major challenge for years, which we can call generational change, which is especially aggravated by phenomena such as the large processes of access to the civil service in the 1980s and by the gradual reduction in the number of members of the family units of the new generations, which undoubtedly increases the average age of public employees.

According to the National Institute of Statistics (INE), today more than half of public employees are 50 years old or older, which undoubtedly creates an inverted pyramid that requires clear and focused decision-making to help with the necessary replacement in the positions of the Public Administration in order to maintain an adequate level of public service.

For years, the most relevant measures in the Public Administration as a whole in this area have focused on increasing the retirement age and in some way helping to delay the departure of public employees, which according to INE data mostly occurs when they reach between 62 and 64 years of age.

The Tax Agency is not immune to this phenomenon, and its Strategic Plan 2024/2027 already indicated that, in accordance with the projections made for the coming years for the preparation and approval of the annual Public Employment Offers, it is necessary to promote growth in the number of employees that make up the Tax Agency's workforce as the only way to mitigate the effect of future retirements and to reach a number of public employees in line with its structure and tasks.

One of the first consequences of a public employee leaving their organization is the loss of knowledge derived from their experience in the job. Although it may seem paradoxical, only the passage of time will allow a new civil servant entering the Administration to compensate for the loss of knowledge that occurs in an organization with the retirement processes of its most veteran employees.

To mitigate this initial effect, it is necessary to recognize the need for strategic plans with medium and long-term impact that allow and facilitate coexistence between the new generations entering the Administration and its more experienced employees. It is undeniable that different generations must coexist for a time in their workplace and also have to reconcile cultural, technological and academic differences that, nevertheless, should serve to help that necessary transition.

It seems clear that knowing the regulations, jurisprudence, protocols, and the operation of the organization's intranet applications is simply a matter of will and a learning effort on the part of new employees. However, for this to happen, the organization they are joining must properly manage the training processes that help the new employee to be able to make decisions, develop proposals, and give continuity to the administrative procedure in a reasonable time.

The digitization and technological change that has taken place in the last few decades in the Public Administration in Spain has made it possible to greatly reduce the impact of the difference between a high number of retirements and a replacement rate that has not always managed to maintain the balance in the real number of entries and exits of public employees.

Managing the selection processes that allow the organization of the entry of new civil servants and staff to ensure the continuity of the Administration's operation is itself another major challenge for the public sector. Leaving aside the political or social content discussions that can be derived from comparing the Public Employment Offers (OEP) of recent years in Spain, reality leads us to the need for the execution of these Offers through the selection processes to be a coordinated, homogeneous and stable instrument.

Security is one of the key factors when encouraging a student or a private sector employee to pursue the life project of gaining access to a position in the Administration. Behind it all there may be a family, a life project and expectations that may or may not ultimately be fulfilled, but which must always have a scenario of stability in the structure of the selection processes, in the content of the syllabi and, no less important, in a number of places available in each exercise that allow the candidate to face the challenge with guarantees in the medium and long term.

Adequate preparation by the candidate to join the Administration must be linked to a content of the competitive examination program that is as adapted as possible to what will later be the content of their skills, without prejudice to the fact that, as happens mainly in the selection processes of groups A1 and A2, it is necessary to complete this autonomous training with the passage through training courses in the specialized Schools created for this purpose by the different bodies.

The implicit obligation of the Public Administration to maintain a model of citizen service with a public service of the appropriate level to comply with the established constitutional mandate for this purpose must also involve adequate talent management. To achieve this, the combination of the experience of older officials, the continuous training processes of their employees to keep them up to date not only on the regulations that apply to them, but also on the technological innovations that become part of their daily operations, and the search for new members adequately prepared to join the Public Administration are undoubtedly one of the challenges that the managers of the various public bodies must always keep at the forefront and as one of their main objectives.