Values exist. Life can be much easier when you acknowledge your values and when you make plans and decisions that honour them.
Every individual and every organization are involved in making hundreds of decisions every day. The decisions we make are a reflection of our values and beliefs, and they are always directed towards a specific purpose.
That purpose is the satisfaction of our individual or collective (organizational) needs.
When we use our values to make decisions, we make a deliberate choice to focus on what is important to us. When values are shared, they build internal cohesion in a group.
Values define what is important to an organisation and how things will be done.
In public sector, they underpin an employee’s interaction with the government, community, suppliers and other employees.
The public sector values underpin the behaviours that the government and community rightly expect of all public sector employees.
When public sector employees consistently act in accordance with the public sector values, it strengthens the capacity of public sector organisations to operate effectively and achieve their objectives.
Ethical behaviour in the civil service is promoted both through legal rules and through ethical standards that underpin and, at the same time, go beyond the legal requirements.
Ethical considerations provide the standards of accountability that can be used to scrutinize the work of civil servants.
Sound public administration involves public trust. Citizens expect public servants to serve the public interest, to manage public resources properly on a daily basis, and to make individual decisions fairly.
Fair and reliable public services and predictable decision-making inspire public trust.
The integrity, transparency, and accountability of public administrations are prerequisites for, and underpin, public trust, as a keystone of good governance.
Misconduct on the part of those who have been entrusted with guarding the public interest and resources has implications for public institutions, in terms of trust and also confidence.
Embedding high ethical standards into the public sector is important because it establishes the benchmark of conduct to be achieved by the public sector and provides guidance to those who want to meet those standards.
Ethics matter. The public are right to expect high ethical standards and the government must ensure that this is achieved regardless of who is providing public services.
Ethical standards should not be taken for granted and they have not been taken seriously enough to date.
High ethical standards are important for society as a whole and that they are particularly important where public money is being spent on public services or public functions.
