In recent times, there is an increasing expectation from ordinary citizens, business leaders and Civil Society for higher standards of ethical behaviour and integrity in the Civil Services. To promote this, various methods like Code of Conduct, Citizen Charters, etc have been developed. However, the focus should also be on internalizing professional ethics and integrity in civil services to make it more citizen-friendly.

Values involved in the case

• • Ethical integrity of civil servants.
  • Probity in governance.
  • Moral aptitude of civil servants.
  • Accountability and responsibility.
  • Transparency and citizen participation.

Specific focus issues and measures to address them

• • Anticipating specific threats to ethical standards and integrity in the civil services.
    
    
  • Red-tapism: Unnecessary administrative complexities to effective service delivery should be identified and removed.
  • Culture of Secrecy: Decisions made by civil servants and public officials should be made as transparent and open as possible. Reasons must be given for official decisions.
  • Inadequate grievance redressal System: Effective mechanisms should be put in place to ensure timely resolution of public complaints and appropriate feedback provided to the public organisations. Grievance redressal processes should be monitored so as to ensure that systems are reviewed and performance is improved.
  • Biasedness and Partisan Attitude: Implementation of conduct rules and code of ethics in order to create a professional and non-partisan civil service hierarchy.
  • Elitism of civil servants: Public orientation in Civil servants is crucial to increase public participation and improve public service delivery. Civil servants should be given proper training to ensure citizen-friendly behaviour.
• Strengthening the ethical competence of civil servant.
  
  
  • Training and performance appraisal: This would incentivise the honest civil servants and make them role models for others to emulate.
  • Reward and honours: It will infuse competition in the civil services to perform better and develop innovative solutions for public service.
  • Promotion of inclusive work culture: Diluting strict hierarchy to increase the cooperation among public officials to increase the effectiveness of services.
  • Social and cultural competence: This would help the civil servant to understand the diverse Indian society and perform as per the high aspirations of the public.
• Developing administrative processes and practices which promote ethical values and integrity in civil services.
  
  
  • Promoting accountability: Effective laws which require civil servants to give reasons for their official decisions. For eg. RTI act.
  • Reducing Corruption: Punitive provision like Prevention of Corruption Act and Whistleblower Protection act, technological Interventions in the form of e-governance to remove discretion, promotion of Social Auditing etc to ensure accountability of the administrative work.
  • Human Resource management strategies: Performance-based pay, Lateral Entry, Multi-Phase training will increase the efficiency and quality of public service delivery.
  • Internal and External Committees: To ensure redressal of complaints and grievances of civil servants and public. This improves the work culture and aligns the behaviour of public servants to the desired civil services values.
  • Code of Conduct Rules: It ensures appropriate behaviour from public servants that should be unbiased and non-partisan.

Promotion of ethical behaviour and integrity in civil servants, and revamping the public administration is critical to ensure that the policies of social welfare are implemented in true spirit. It would improve the responsiveness of public servants towards the common citizenry. Also, public trust would increase in the government setup. Greater social capital can in turn help in the promotion of ethical governance.