senior civil servant

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.