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Chapter 3: Embedding the APS Values and Code of Conduct
The APS Values set a framework of enduring principles that define the institution that is the APS. They replace the former employment control framework based on detailed central rules, to allow the flexibility necessary for the modern Service to drive different business tasks and to respond quickly to changing circumstances.
Since the PS Act came into operation in late 1999, the Public Service Commissioner has progressively promulgated directions and advice on how the Values should be embedded in agency operations, and each State of the Service report has highlighted the importance of agency efforts to promote the Values and ensure compliance with the Code of Conduct.
Last year, the State of the Service report used for the first time a useful grouping of the Values, which emphasises the role of values-based management in defining key relationships and behaviours that underpin the integrity of an organisation’s decision-making process in the absence of detailed, central rules. For the APS, these are:
- the relationship between the APS, the Government and the Parliament
- the relationship between the APS and the public
- workplace relationships
- personal behaviour.
This year’s report is even more closely structured around these four groups of the APS Values.
Over the past year, the APS Commission has extended its work, particularly through its Values in Agencies evaluation project, leading to the release in August of a good practice guide for agencies on embedding the Values, and a new guide for APS employees on official conduct. Part of the value of these new guides is that they draw upon international experience.
There is now broad interest in values-based management and recognition that, effectively implemented, it offers organisations a long-term ethical framework without unduly constraining flexibility and adaptability. International and Australian research links organisational ethics with high levels of employee performance and the capacity to attract and retain staff.1
Research also confirms that leadership is crucial to the successful operation of a values-based management system. Even with leadership support, values need to be managed strategically and ‘hardwired’ into systems and processes, to ensure consistency and coherence.
While the link between ethical and effective organisational performance has broad-based relevance, it has been identified as critical to public service organisations. A number of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, including Australia, have updated their core public service values sets in recent years, resulting in new values being added to reflect the increasingly results-based public service culture. The OECD advises that governments need to ensure that ethics are placed centre stage in the reform process, along with the goals of economic efficiency and effectiveness. Again this is consistent with the Australian approach where the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997 (FMA Act) requires financial management to be based on the efficient, effective and ethical use of resources.
This chapter discusses the ways in which agencies are integrating the APS Values and the Code of Conduct into their systems and processes, and transforming them into daily decision making and behaviour. Information has been obtained from three sources. The first is the findings of the APS Commission’s Values in Agencies project. Second, drawing on self reporting by agencies through the agency survey, the chapter examines the measures agencies have taken in 2002–03 to promote an understanding of the Values and the Code. Third, the chapter examines the views of employees, gathered through the employee survey, on issues relating to the Values and the Code.
1 F Vogl, Corporate integrity and globalisation—The dawning of a new era of accountability and transparency, lecture delivered at the Pennsylvania State University, 23 March 2001; Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), Ethics—The key to good management, NSW, 1998; ICAC, What is an ethical culture? Key issues to consider in building an ethical organisation—Summary report, NSW, 2000, http://www.icac.nsw.gov.au