civil servant
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A civil servant is a person who works for a government department or agency, performing the everyday tasks that keep government operations running. Civil servants matter because they implement policies, deliver public services, and keep government functioning across countless roles—from teachers and social workers to administrators and engineers.
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The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil service personnel hired rather than elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leadership. A civil service official, also known as a civil servant or public servant or public employee, is a person employed in the public sector by a government department or agency for public sector undertakings. Civil servants include workers at any level of government, and in a healthy civil service answer to that government, not a political party.
The extent of civil servants of a state as part of the "civil service" varies from country to country. In the United Kingdom (UK), for instance, only Crown (national government) employees are referred to as "civil servants" whereas employees of local authorities (counties, cities and similar administrations) are generally referred to as "local government officers", who are considered public servants but not civil servants. Thus, in the UK, a civil servant is a public servant but a public servant is not necessarily a civil servant.