I don't know your government, but I once worked in such a job and its mostly not true. Fixed scheme yes, and maybe a bit less responsibilities compared to the private sector. But workload and culture was similar.

It would still be ok to ask about to find that out.

That's not fair, they skim bs emails as a responsibility

You should still be able to ask what the job entails in a general sense. (Like clerical, data analytics, design, etc...) It's usually where the give their spiel such as, "You will be helping to design and roll out a new system that helps focus our resources on what's important; the people."

They may be talking out of their ass, but at least you could glean at a very high level what you'll be doing. (Otherwise a revolving door of dissatisfied hirees could open up)

Even if salary is based on pay grades, there's no guarantee the grade was listed in the job posting. Just asking shouldn't be a disqualifier. The grades aren't necessarily based on years of service, and can have fairly large ranges.

Plus, sometimes the posting is for either a level 1 or level 2 position so you don't necessarily know what they'll classify you as. For instance my previous IT job I had an engineer level position, but my new job put me as level 1.

Hell, I work for a government funded institution and when we interview people salary is one of the first things discussed, because there's no wiggle room. We've already duked it out with HR and that's literally the most we can offer.

It's better to get that out of the way if the amount is going to be a deal breaker rather than wasting everyone's time. Although it's pretty common for people to reject job offers because they never say it's too low before that point.