The maintenance of high ethical values is critical to the maintenance and enhancement of public trust and confidence in government and government services.
State Services Commission on guidance material for public servants.
Ethics network volunteers have been working with us to provide feedback to the State Services Commission on guidance material for public servants. The first piece we gave feedback on was a number of scenarios developed by SSC as part of an education module dealing with public service neutrality. The second piece of feedback was on efforts to update a SSC’s ‘Understanding the Code of Conduct’ document. We’d like to formally thank those volunteers for their time and energy, and will be sure to post links to the documents on this page when they are finalised.
Conference on "Ethical Foundation of Public Policy"
The PSA sponsored two PSA Ethics Network members, Heather Taylor and Gabrielle Duggan to attend the international conference on ‘Ethical Foundations of Public Policy’ in December last year. The conference took place in Wellington and was organised by the Institute of Policy Studies, Victoria University in association with the Philosophy Programme at Victoria and the Centre for Theology and Public Issues, Otago University. National Secretary Brenda Pilott also attended the conference as did some PSA staff and PSA members in their work capacity. We encourage you to read the conference papers available via the conference website.
Heather and Gabrielle have kindly offered their reports on the Conference for publication on our website. Their views are written from their perspective as PSA members.
Gabrielle Duggan's report (WORD doc 28kb)
Heather Taylor's report (WORD doc 30kb)
You are welcome to provide feedback on their reports via Tjarda.Wierdsma@psa.org.nz.
Political Neutrality
Wellington-based Ethics Network members met in February to discuss guidance on political neutrality.
PSA National Secretary Brenda Pilott introduced the session and spoke of the guidance from the State Services Commission. In our view this guidance is not clear and does not place enough emphasis on human rights and freedom of expression. PSA Solicitor, Catherine McNamara, explained how advice from a department may even breach the NZ Bill of Rights Act.
You can access the powerpoint presentations here:
Political Neutrality in the Public Service and the NZ Bill of Rights Act 1990 (154kb)
Political Neutrality (1.5MB)
The group then considered what guidance PSA should provide to its members, and how best to promulgate this guidance. We developed some good initial steps, received good feedback from the group on how best to structure the advice, and agreed that the Journal, PSA website, a ‘factsheet’ and incorporation of the principles into our delegate development training modules would be very good places to start. Once we have our online forum up and running, we will invite other ethics network members to discuss these ideas further.
Terms of reference
The PSA executive has endorsed the terms of reference for the Ethics Network. Click here
Forum on public sector ethics, June 24
To launch the PSA Ethics Network, former PSA president Colin Hicks spoke at members’ forum in Wellington on public sector ethics. Colin was course co-ordinator in public sector ethics at Victoria University School of Government. Colin Hicks’ paper
Strong interest in ethics network
About 200 PSA members have asked to be spent papers and have expressed an interest being kept informed about the PSA Ethics Network. The PSA is to set up an email group and online discussion forum to further the debate around ethical standards.
PSA to set up an ethics network
Recent incidents have raised questions about ethical standards in the public sector. While isolated, they have the potential to undermine public confidence and the valuable work of public sector workers.
The PSA has identified the need for an ethics network to develop and promote a members’ perspective on issues of public sector ethics. Ethics are at the heart of public sector professionalism and to be vigilantly safeguarded.
For the good of others
In a New Statesman (UK) article, Peter Wilby asks whether the public sector ethos is on its last legs.
More
Public sector ethos
Research finds that public sector ethos makes a real difference in the delivery of public services (see page 16).
Research in Public Policy
In Australia the Ethics Advisory Service is available to all Australian Public Service (APS) employees who want advice on ethical issues in the workplace and on how to make sound decisions around these issues.It contains lots of useful information, publications and videos. Check it out here.