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Last updated: 28 August 2003
APS Values and Code of Conduct in practice - Making them work
NIG Seminar
The Telstra Theatre
Australian War Memorial
Andrew Podger
27 August 2003
Launch of publications
On Monday this week, together with Peter Shergold, Ken Matthews and Terry Gallagher from ITSA, I launched two new Commission publications about the APS Values and the Code of Conduct.
The two publications together represent an important consolidation of the reforms effected by the Public Service Act 1999. The first, a new guide on official conduct replaces the last guidelines on official conduct issued by the then Public Service Commission in 1995. It is a substantially different document, structured closely around the APS Values that are now enshrined in legislation.
The second publication is a management guide for senior staff about embedding the APS Values and the Code of Conduct into agencies' culture, systems and procedures.
The 1995 guidelines on official conduct, together with the MAB/MIAC publication Ethical standards and values in the Australian Public Service released in 1996, were key documents in the progress towards the values-based management framework we are now all working within. Building on its earlier work, MAB/MIAC proposed general principles of public administration that would underline the ethical component of public service activity in a new Public Service Act.
MAB/MIACs formulation, which brings together traditional public service values of impartiality, accountability within the framework of Ministerial responsibility, merit-based staffing, and probity and integrity, also gave an increased emphasis to the need for responsiveness to governments and managing for results, and heavily influenced the APS Values articulated in the Public Service Act a few years later.
The Public Service Act 1999 gave legislative effect to the Government's new public service employment framework based on devolution and flexibility. It was balanced by increased accountability within a clearly defined set of shared APS Values and a Code of Conduct for all APS employees. The Act requires Agency Heads to promote and uphold the APS Values and the Code. As Public Service Commissioner my first two functions set out in section 41 of the Act are to evaluate the:
- extent to which agencies incorporate and uphold the APS Values; and
- the adequacy of systems and procedures in agencies for ensuring compliance with the Code of Conduct.
The legislative framework based on articulated values presents a risk management approach of central prescription. Without careful management, it may also be a risky approach.
Values in agencies project
When I was appointed Public Service Commissioner in January 2002, the Public Service Act had been in place for just over two years and the specific measures required by the Act were largely bedded down in agencies. Given my responsibilities to evaluate agency systems and procedures to incorporate the APS Values and the Code of Conduct, I believed it was timely to test the operation and practice of the APS Values-based management framework with the aim of producing a good practice guide for Service-wide use.
Therefore, in August 2002, I invited six APS agencies to participate in a project (the Values in Agencies project) to evaluate the means by which the APS Values and Code of Conduct were being embedded in those agencies.
Those agencies were the Department of Defence, the Department of Transport and Regional Services, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Insolvency and Trustee Service Australia, Centrelink and the Attorney-General's Department.
The studies took place in late 2002 and early 2003. A Reference Group, consisting of the heads of the six participating agencies, advised me on the parameters of the study, the methodology, issues arising from the study and the content of the publication.
A team from the Commission worked closely with the six agencies to identify and clarify strategies, systems and procedures being used to embed the Values and the Code, and to test the effectiveness of agency approaches in focus groups and in interviews with staff.
Robert Cornall and Paul Hickey will shortly be giving a personal view about their agencies' involvement.
The Commission's work also involved a review of the literature on Australian and international values-based management. I want briefly to try and summarise some of that research.
First, it confirmed a broad interest in values-based management and recognition that effectively implemented it offers organisations a framework of relations and behaviours within which they can implement with some confidence different business tasks and respond quickly to changing circumstances.
Since the 1980s, the organisational search for faster response rates, more tailored outputs and increased productivity has been linked to calls for increased flexibility in management systems. In both public and private sectors, detailed prescription and instruction-based management have had to be replaced by generalised guidance from management and informed judgement by employees.
Second, the Commission's research showed links between organisational ethics and improved organisational performance. For example, research conducted by the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC 1998) found that the ethical tone of an organisation impacts on efficiency and effectiveness, decision making processes, staff commitment and job satisfaction, staff stress and staff turnover. The research also determined that strong, clearly stated values could guide people through choices, so that making ethical decisions was the path of least resistance. On the basis of these findings it was argued that making ethical practices a priority was not just about functioning with integrity or being credible; it was also about optimising the efficient functioning of an organisation.
Third, the research found that leadership is crucial to the successful operation of a values-based management system. Research by the Corporate Leadership Council confirms that leadership is the factor most frequently cited as the key to successfully implementing a values strategy from start to finish. Without a supportive organisational leadership and culture, values-based systems can become inoperable. Indeed, the maintenance of a meaningful values-based framework is critically dependent on constant adherence to the values by the organisation and its managers in all actions (Corporate Leadership Council 1998 and 2001).
Fourth, values need to be 'hardwired' into systems and processes and leadership behaviours. I met Professor Lynn Sharp Paine of Harvard Business School last year at a leadership forum on ethical challenges in Hong Kong. In conversation I found that her work in the private sector is similar to the Australian Government's work in the public sector. We saw similar benefits in a values-based management framework, but also similar dangers if values are not 'hardwired' into the organisation's systems and processes and leadership behaviours. She illustrated this by holding up Enron's statement of organisational values. Values need to become second nature to employees, not just management rhetoric.
The Public Management Committee of the OECD also argues strongly that integrity measures should not be a distinct activity. But rather an integral part of all management systems in which they provide complementary support for the overall management environment (OECD: 2000).
Values for the public sector
While the link between ethical and effective organisational performance has broad based relevance, it has been identified as critical to public service organisations. And identifying core values is the first step to establishing a common understanding of the behaviour expected of public office holders. All OECD countries publish a set of core values for guiding their public servants in daily operations. These are drawn from substantially the same sources: social norms, democratic principles and professional ethics. As a result there is considerable commonality between core public service values identified by member countries. They generally include:
- the definitions of values and professional standards to guide personal and professional behaviour covering probity, integrity and responsible financial management
- policies on disclosure of conflicts of interest, use of official confidential information, fairness, equity and merit
- recognition of the multiplicity of duties and respective accountability to the executive government, to public sector employers, to professional bodies and to the broader public interest (James 2003: 98).
While values such as impartiality, merit selection, equity, high ethical standards and accountability have been widely regarded as core to the public sector, national public service value sets have been revised in recent years largely driven by global and technological pressures combining to force governments around the world to be more results-oriented, more flexible and agile, more responsive to customers and government, and more innovative in the use of technology.
Since 1995, more than one-third of OECD countries have updated their core public service values, and further reviews are still being done. This has resulted in new values being added to reflect the increasingly results-based public service culture. In the course of these revisions countries have also chosen to re-emphasise traditional values while giving them a modern context. The eight most commonly stated values in OECD countries are:
Australia has been no exception to these trends. Since federation, the Australian public service has been mindful of the requirement to account for the use of public money and to comply with the values of public service. Australia has progressed to statutory articulation of values and the 15 Values now in the Public Service Act.
According to the final explanatory memorandum for the 1999 Public Service Bill the APS Values are designed to:
- provide the philosophical underpinning for the APS
- reflect public expectations of the relationship between public servants and the government, parliament, and the Australian community
- articulate the culture and operating ethos of the APS
- support and inform the Public Service Commissioner's Directions to be issued under the authority of the Bill.
In theory, today's APS Values and the Code of Conduct should provide a basis for ongoing continuity and consistency of management for the APS even while it continues to operate in a devolved environment of constantly changing social and political circumstances. In practice, though the framework is stable and likely to remain so, its application is not. While global factors drive the need to achieve efficiency and effectiveness, public sector leadership must drive the need to maintain high levels of ethical conduct.
In a draft ethics checklist circulated a few years ago, and designed to help member countries in reviewing and reforming systems for improving ethical conduct in the public sector, the OECD outlined what it saw as the elements of a well functioning ethics infrastructure (OECD 1997). The Commission saw a use for this work at an organisational level.
Taking into account the work undertaken with the six agencies and international evidence about values-based management the Commission concluded that:
- A strategic and integrated approach is required to promote and maintain a values-based culture within an organisation.
- Such an approach requires effective leadership which establishes a fair and robust values-based culture with complementary learning and development strategies.
- It also requires hardwiring of the Values into instructions and guidance and effective control and assurance mechanisms.
- To foster and sustain a culture based on the APS Values, agencies need to guide and work with their people so that employees are aware of the APS Values and Code of Conduct and develop good judgement in their application to their everyday duties.
As a result of the project's conclusions that a strategic and integrated approach is required to promote and maintain a values-based culture within an organisation, the Commission developed 'The APS Values Framework' to help APS leaders with this task.
The framework is specific to the APS but draws on and adapts international experience and work undertaken by the OECD (OECD: 1997).
The APS Values Framework
Building a fair and robust environment to inspire public trust, give APS employees confidence and improve organisational performance.
The framework, and an accompanying checklist, are intended to be used by Agency Heads and senior executives as a tool for explaining the APS Values to employees and for assessing performance and identifying areas where more emphasis and attention are required.
Action is required at two levels to integrate APS Values into agency culture:
- grouping the Values-a simple clarification of the Values so that they can be more easily explained to APS agencies across the Service, and
- promoting and upholding the Values-a holistic approach by each agency to build the robust management environment necessary to promote and uphold the Values, and to inspire public trust and organisational performance.
At its core, values-based management is all about relationships and behaviours. Both of the new publications launched on Monday provide a simple way of explaining the Values in terms of the key relationships and behaviours they affect:
- the relationship between the APS and the Government and the Parliament
- the relationship between the APS and the public
- relationships in the workplace and
- personal behaviour.
In the APS, we are responsible for the way we work with the Government and the Parliament, with the public and each other. We are also expected to have the highest ethical standards. Although people in all walks of life have common law duties and obligations, we are different from other employees providing services in the market-place, in that we exercise authority on behalf of the Government and the Parliament, acting for the public. The Australian community rightly expects high performance and high standards of personal behaviour.
These relationships and behaviours effectively define the APS as an institution in Australia's democratic system. Various Values within each of the groups reflect the core principles of public administration that have applied in Westminster systems of government for over a hundred years.
While some Values when applied in the real world of the public service have meaning in more than one relationship, they were mapped for the purpose of the framework into one of four groups.
There are three supporting elements at the base of the framework-commitment, management and assurance. They are the driving forces for integration of the APS Values into an agency and are the key to transforming the Values into daily decision-making and behaviour.
Commitment-This is about organisational leaders defining an ethical values-based culture-making clear that values-based conduct is expected from all employees, but particularly senior executives and managers, and that misconduct will not be tolerated. It is about all agency guidance systems, including learning and development programs, being directed at encouraging good judgement and discretion in decision-making and giving a consistent message that behaviour in accordance with the Values is expected.
Management-This is about hardwiring the Values and the Code into management policies, systems and guidance that are consciously communicated and accessible to everyone who needs them. Policies, instructions and guidance need to be coordinated so that the APS Values are part of day-to-day decision making. This is consistent with Professor Paine's research which suggests that there is a requirement for fit or correspondence between an organisation's systems and processes taken as a whole and the expectation inherent in values.
Assurance-This is provided by effectively using accountability and control mechanisms such as the Code of Conduct, fraud control and risk assessment strategies and contract management arrangements. Employees need to be comfortable with reporting wrongdoing. And suspected breaches of the Code of Conduct should be fairly investigated. Sanctions should have substance and command the respect of employees. Quality assurance mechanisms, such as staff and client surveys, should be used to monitor adherence to the APS Values throughout the agency and to improve agency practice.
The framework is described in more detail in Embedding the APS Values where it is illustrated with case studies from the six agencies that are also set out more fully in a second volume.
Two specific issues discussed are the potential role of Chief Executive Instructions to promote ethical behaviour, and how to ensure Agency-specific value statements support rather than hide the legal obligation of all APS employees to the APS Values.
Conduct guidelines
The new guidelines on official conduct, released on Monday, are based around the four groups of Values in the framework.
They have been subject to wide consultation across and beyond the APS, and I am confident they will prove to be of great practical use throughout the APS. They are not a set of rules, but a guide and reference document.
The new guidelines provide a summary of important legal requirements across the Service as well as information about good practice, in situations where legislation allows for discretion. They aim to clarify the principles that are articulated in the Values and the Code and the way in which they should inform and guide decision-making.
The guidelines can be used to support agency learning and development activities (the 'Commitment' part of the framework) by stimulating discussion about the Values and ethical dilemmas. While the conduct guidelines do not set out to provide an answer to every question about official conduct, the principles identified will point to an answer in many cases, as will the detailed discussion of various issues.
Each section of the conduct guidelines are divided into chapters dealing with aspects of the APS and its various relationships.
Areas where the new Guidelines have been substantially revised include in relations with Ministers and Ministers' Offices, relations with the private sector and stakeholders, managing conflict of interest and the related issues of post-separation employment and acceptance of gifts and benefits including hospitality. The approach taken in the guidelines is not on of impractical zealotry, but one I hope supports a highly effective and modern public service conscious of the high standards the community expects.
APS Commission - Next steps
The publications have pointed to further work for the Commission. In particular, APS employees need to be capable of recognising ethical dilemmas and making considered judgements based on the APS Values and Code of Conduct. The Department of Health and Ageing introduced a program for its employees a few years ago, entitled The Fork in the Road Café, which encourages employees, when faced with difficult judgements, to stop and talk to respected colleagues, discover precedents, legal factors and available guidelines, and make a considered decision, taking all relevant information into account. Programs such as these are very valuable.
The APS Commission is proposing to develop this approach by preparing a toolkit. It will help agencies to build their own programs that will guide employees in workplace discussion of values and ethics.
I am looking forward to hearing from agencies about how they have used the guides and the messages they contain.
