I work for the government. I'm going to be straightforward with you: It's not like working in a corporate environment. Unless you're a politician, you're peon. The only way peons climb ranks is if someone way high up dies or retires, and then the open positions trickle down the pyramid to the bottom. Then, you're competing with more and more people the further down the ladder you go.

If you want a chance at getting one of those higher positions, you need to first, learn how to do your job and do it well (to the point where you can teach any idiot off the street to do it), and second, learn how to do your boss' job. Which means you want them to take you under their wing and show you the ropes of what they do. Then, you start taking work off of them and learning how to do the job that they do.

Then, once you get into the next higher up position, you can pawn some of your work onto your subordinates, while taking on your higher-ups responsibilities. If you learn the boss' job before the position opens up, you'll be a top contender for the position when it does. The idea is to make yourself invaluable, so that if something goes awry (such as layoffs or whatnot) then you are one of the keepers. Your boss will fight tooth and nail for you because without you, they will have to do all their own work.

This can take many years. The good news is, you get good benefits and ALL the holidays are paid (I get 14 paid holidays per year).

"How to win friends and influence people" is the classic in the field.

I run with a guy who has done all sorts of jobs as a civil servant to government cabinet ministers. He has been posted to a wide variety of departments and had to start fresh in new subject areas. From listening to him as we puff along, it seems to be a case of keep your nose clean -don't do anything wrong or too grey. Then be a friendly guy who has the habits of the clique and who gives off the image that he gets shit done. Its less important he says to succeed with glory than not to ever badly fuck up. For this reason you have to know when to say no if they heap a project too many on you or you may be too thinly spread and fuck up or just get burned out and stop giving off competent vibes. Its better to be indifferent and not fuck up, than stand out and do so.

This don't fuck up would also fit with my father's experience. I won't write the embarrassing fuck up here as its potentially doxing and why humiliate him anyway, years after his one and only error but suffice it to say that the most expensive piece of new military hardware you can imagine failed to do the one thing it really has to do in testing because he messed up a calculation (pre computers).That was the end of his specialist career and he became a second rank generalist after that. After that his boss said "Understand that if I give you 3 things to do and you only finish one I am fine with it but if you do 3 and one is wrong, I am furious." Governments have deep resources. No one is ever indispensable and they can almost always get someone else to cover if you can't manage it but they don't like fuckups.