There is an important consensus in the region on relation to the importance of the quality of civil service systems when thinking on improving the quality of State action. However, the efforts to reform the civil service systems are scarce in the region. Even though if the issue arises in government agendas, it is unusual that reform processes got started and improve measures are approved. It is more unusual that the approved measures are effectively implemented. How to foster this kind of reforms? How to get that reform measures that improve State capacities are approved and then implemented? These are key questions we need to answer in order to get Latin American governments answer adequately to actual technical and political challenges. Within the region, Chile has one of the more extended, stable and innovative institutional reform processes. One of the more interesting features of this process is that it was not limited to reduce the scope of governmental activity, but it undertook by several means the challenge to improve public institutional capacities. Reforming the civil service system was part of this effort. Civil service is clearly a key factor to improve governmental capacities. Improving human resources management must be an important component of those institutional reforms that search to strength governmental institutional capacities and improve public policies quality. To identify lessons on the base of the few civil service reform experiences in the region is highly relevant. This document tries to identify possible areas of learning that can be interesting to other countries on the basis of the Chilean civil service reform. The paper focuses on two directions: i) the deployment strategy followed by the Chilean reform, and ii) the policy options that guided the process.
