Public/Civil service values and Ethics in Public administration : General studies UPSC IAS

Wikipedia defines civil service as the permanent professional branches of a government's administration, excluding military and judicial branches and elected politicians.

In India, the civil service personnel’s are accountable to ministers/elected representatives, who in turn are accountable to Parliament. The Parliament is elected by the people. Thus the bureaucrats serve the people by executing functions which are directed by Parliament in the best interest of its people. Be it IAS or IPS or any civil service there are a set of core values common to all. These core values determine the standards of behaviour a person in civil service must follow. Each individual service will have its own set of values which are based on these core values.

Values of civil service

Values

A member of the civil service in discharge of his/her functions is to be guided by maintaining absolute integrity, allegiance to the constitution and the law of the nation, patriotism, national pride, devotion to duty, honesty, impartiality and transparency.

• ·         Integrity – putting the obligations of public service above personal interests
• ·         Honesty – being truthful and open
• ·         Objectivity – basing advice and decisions on rigorous analysis of the evidence
• ·         Impartiality – acting solely according to the merits of the case and serving governments of different political parties equally well

In country like India where there are so many diverse cultures, treating all people with respect is of paramount importance. This includes giving respect to diversity of people and also giving respect to fellow workers.

The Government of India promotes values and a certain standard of ethics of requiring and facilitating every civil servant

• ·         To discharge official duty with responsibility, honesty, accountability and without discrimination.
• ·         To ensure effective management, leadership development and personal growth.
• ·         To avoid misuse of official position or information.
• ·         To serve as instruments of good governance and foster social economic development.

The high level of corruption, favouritism etc has increased the importance of maintaining civil service values. Only when civil service values are maintained, nation building process can go undeterred.

Good civil service values=good governance=better nation

The question that worries governments is, how to inculcate civil service values?

The three approaches are

• Economical
• Behavioural
• Legal

Eg: A government doctor in medical college is given non-practising allowance. There is a vigilance wing to see that the doctors don’t practise privately. Here the idea is that the high salary will satisfy his financial needs (economic), while law will prevent him from doing private practice (legal).

Its seen that the legal and economic methods aren’t able to create civil service values in many cases. Here lies the importance of behavioural change.(The topic behavioural change comes under “Attitude: content, structure, function; its influence and relation with thought and behaviour; moral and political attitudes; social influence and persuasion”)

Even after spending tonnes of money for legal and economic changes, still civil service values have seen value erosion. Thus these days the thought to inculcate civil service reforms is based mainly on behavioral change.

The behavioral change methods can be –

• Education- Creating necessary skills to enable effective decision making
• Training – The civil servants are offered in-service/mid-career training to increase professionalism and values.
• Mentoring 
• Periodical review/feed back

Countries like UK, have a civil service competency framework to enable/evaluate civil service values. Promotion and perks would be based on “What the civil servant does to people” rather than “Whom he knows”.