Institutionalizing of ethics is not done by the passage of legislation, regulation, or by any executive fiat. Building ethics into the consciousness, reasoning, and action of a public sector not only takes time but involves an extensive process. To an extent, the regime is about the process of building ethics into the way employees think and act. Not only must they be involved in the process, the process of their ethical involvement is the core of the regime.
The only mandatory requirements were on CEO to involve employees in developing agency codes, to engage in ethics education, and to report annually on the process in the agency. The act required the process rather than command the result.
If the ethics regime is likely to be institution specific , this will be doubly true of the means by which it is developed and built into the agency. Building ethics into a agency is one of those complex processes through which you seek to move from where you are, to where you hope to be. Ignoring the institution in which this process must occur or the staff and units who will need to take an active part would render the whole exercise pointless.
Furthermore, many of the benefits may be generated by the process as much as by the end result. Participation in the process can be one of the best forms of ethics education available. For the agency, it constitutes one of the best methods of identifying the ethical issue it has to confront.
A General Code should be inspirational, declaratory, exhortatory, and educational but not enforceable. In particular, the primary obligations should not be enforceable by themselves but through the more specialized codes for individual public sector agencies.
Institutionalizing of ethics is not done by the passage of legislation, regulation, or by any executive fiat. Building ethics into the consciousness, reasoning, and action of a public sector not only takes time but involves an extensive process. To an extent, the regime is about the process of building ethics into the way public sector employees think and act. Not only must they be involved in the process, the process of their ethical involvement is the core of the regime.
If the ethics regime is likely to be institution specific , this will be doubly true of the means by which it is developed and built into the agency. Building ethics into an agency is one of those complex processes through which you seek to move from where you are, to where you hope to be. Ignoring the institution in which this process must occur or the staff and units who will need to take an active part would render the whole exercise pointless.
This process can be entirely in house involving staff from different units, by a long or short term internal unit, or done with the assistance of outside experts.
Following the drawing up of the general public sector ethical code, the laws creating offences for public officials and those who deal with them should be reconsidered to ensure that they play their backstop role. First, public sector reformers should consider at what point on the normative continuum legal sanctions should be imposed. Secondly, laws should be re drafted in terminology that reflects the ethical norms they are supporting. Thirdly, such laws should be considered for their consistency with ethical standards, ensuring that the most grievous ethical breaches are criminalized and that behavior which is ethical is not.
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