Ethics in Public Service: The Service Behavior of Public Servants in a Changing Society

A Term Paper submitted to:

Atty. Paul Braga

In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the course

Ethics and Accountability in Public Service

(PUAD 3143)

By:

Florante, Raven Jobelle D.

BPS 4-1

October 19, 2018

 The term paper aims to analyze the ethics in the public service of the Philippines by trying to

know if the ethical standards that were mandated were still adhered, this will be done by

showcasing some case studies that presents the behaviors of the public servants as they serve

the people, factors that affect the changes will also be presented as well as recommendations on

how public service will be made better. This objectives will be fulfilled as the paper will flow by

first, presenting timeframe that study will be using which is from year 2010 to 2018. This part will

also discuss the covered persons of the study which are the government employees or servants.

The sources of ethical standards, laws and mandates that public servants should adhere to will

also be discussed so as to know if there are changes in it on the said eight years. The next section

on the other hand, will showcase case studies presenting the famous cases of public servants

during 2010 to 2018, whether good or bad will be presented so as to check if they are adhering

or not to the given ethical standards. Furthermore, based on the case studies, the next section

will analyze the changes of behavior of the public servants, if there is any. The section will also

present the assumed factors of the changes made by the public servants. Additionally, the last

part will discuss the predicted future that awaits public service. This part will also offer some

suggestion to address the changing behavior and to redress the grievances by offering some

steps and principles that public servants may follow.

I. Ethical Standards in the Philippine Public Service

This section claims that this paper would only be covering those who are covered of the laws

that will be mentioned. This paper will only be using case studies during year 2010 to 2018 so as

to give the fresh data and analysis related to the topic, however it will still use scholarly articles

that are not are not young enough as long as it is related to the topic .
 It has been evident that the Philippines as a country that wishes to forward the rights of every

individual, this can be reflected on the fact that it has provided laws mandates and standards for

each of its constituents to adhere and which they can also use for them to be morally upright so

as to protect the moral of others as well. One proof to this is that the country thereon has provided

laws on how public servants will be as pleasing as they can be, this is in accordance of their

slogan “Gawing lingkod bayani ang bawat kawani”. This basically means that the government

aims to make their servants serve like heroes. Few of those laws are the Republic Act 9485 or

the "Anti-Red Tape Act of 2007" but was amended and turned to be Republic Act “11032” also

known as “Ease of Doing Business Act” and the Republic Act 6713 or the “Code of Conduct and

Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees" both of which were still used in this present

times.

The Republic Act 9485 also known as the "Anti-Red Tape Act of 2007" but was amended and

turned to be Republic Act “11032” also known as “Ease of Doing Business Act” aims to mitigate

the suffering of the Filipino citizens from the procedures that are very much complicated, they are

also time- consuming and officials sometimes even require things that are not necessary, thus

this act punishes and violators and fixers of the said act so as to assure that the Filipino citizens

would be able to experience an efficient transaction with any government official. This is also

beneficial to the official as it escapes him from turning into an unethical servant. It is also worthy

of noting that this act require all government agencies to adhere to it, it also provides the

processes that the government services should follow. One notable part of this act is that one of

the sections thereon mandates to establish a feedback mechanism, in this instance, servants

would be able to assess if they are doing good or not. Penalties so as to teach the servants a

lesson were also indicated in this act.

On the other hand, the Republic Act 6713 also known as the “Code of Conduct and Ethical

Standards for Public Officials and Employees” which exactly include the aim “to promote a high
standard of ethics in public service. Public officials and employees shall at all times be

accountable to the people and shall discharge their duties with utmost responsibility, integrity,

competence, and loyalty, act with patriotism and justice, lead modest lives, and uphold public

interest over personal interest.” This act prohibits the public officials and employees to “have

financial and material interest, own, control, manage or accept employment as officer, employee,

consultant, counsel, broker, agent, trustee or nominee in any private enterprise regulated,

supervised or licensed by their office, engage in the private practice of their profession,

recommend any person to any position, disclose confidential information, and solicit or accept

gifts”. On the other hand, the said act reminds them of their duties to “act promptly on letters and

requests, submit annual performance reports, process documents and papers expeditiously, act

immediately on the public's personal transactions, and make documents accessible to the public”.

Several commentaries including opinions from articles of the mainstream media often

highlights that the penalties of these ethical standards are beneficial as it actually correct and

prevent public officials and employees from wronging their performances as workers. On the other

hand, it has been always prevalent that the public look to these kind of mandates as useless since

they had this notion that it is always easy for the said involved people thereon to hide their

unpleasing acts especially when they have their allies inside and outside the workplace while

some are in support of improving the acts mentioned above so as to make it a better basis for the

servants to be so called as “ethical”. In connection to this, the next section is about present case

studies which probably became the basis of the citizens on their views regarding the ethical

standards and mandates that the government has provided.

II. Public Servants in the Philippines

Looking at the Philippines today, it can be observed that its public service has faced and has

been facing which was primarily made possible by the officials and employee. It can be seen that
instead of making public service an agent to advance the interest of public sector, the private

sector became the highly favoured. Having mentioned this kind of instance, people also tend to

stop trusting the public servants. This case also made the public resort to another preference

which is asking for help and also supporting civil societies who have been very vocal that the

public service has failed the Filipino people. Another challenge which is really obvious and is

making the country suffer for a very long time is the problem brought by graft and corruption,

these first two examples has always been related since corruption begets betrayal of public trust.

(Brillantes et al., 2011). Issues like this never fail to make the public think that public officials and

employees should be perceived as immoral or unethical, that they may be graduates of

prestigious university with numerous awards but are still incapable of distinguishing right and

wrong, not to mention famous names in the government who are also famous for committing

cases like this.

On the other hand, it can also be learned by just looking at the news how public officials and

employees failed to follow the ethical standards set by the legislations. An example to this is the

issue regarding public officials who have conflict of interest as they always include their personal

life and businesses on any of their endeavours in the playing field. Even the simplest adherence

to the prohibition of soliciting and accepting gifts from other individuals can be seen as hard policy

for them to follow.

However, in the midst of all the controversies in the public service, there are still “ethical”

persons who strive with passion as they serve the people. In the daily news and social media

posts, people can still hear and read pieces of information regarding some employees who did

simple kind of good deeds like helping those senior citizens, persons with disabilities and others

who are also in need. There also simple but remarkable cases such as returning lost things to the

owner, there are also news about someone who offered extra help without asking for payment
and the fact that there are servants who receive award also portray that the “gawing lingkod

bayani ang bawat kawani” is not dead.

An article about public servants who were examples of those who are still living up to the

ethical standards in public service was published by a news agency in the country (Rappler.com).

In the said article, the story of Reg Onglao, an employee of Department of Social Welfare and

Development (DSWD) was presented. It was stated there that Onglao was able help herself to be

aware of the social issues and help others by doing her best in field of public service while also

continuing to inspire and help people as she also do help people out of her job, truly she is an

example of the ethics in public service.

The article also featured story of an employee from the Department of Budget and

Management (DBM) who proudly shared that she never had this so called “backer” in the said

government agency and was hired due to her “qualification and competencies”. She is Michelle

Gaurino, who can be regarded as one of those who keeps on adhering to one of the principles of

the public service which is to do their duty with utmost honesty while putting aside their personal

interests.

A story related to the mandate of the government for the public employees to be of great

competencies was also tackled by sharing the case of Elsa Agustin from the Department of

Finance (DoF). Agustin has been doing her job in accordance to the principle of giving her best

so as to help the public by formulating tax policies, providing officials the technical advices that

they need, and by represent the mentioned agency on congressional public hearings and inter-

agency meetings related to tax.

Aaron Lataba of the Department of Finance (DoF) as well was also featured on the said article.

His story of adhering to the ethical standard of serving the public for their betterment was tackled
by sharing that people should never neglect the sacrifices of employees like him as they work

with passion for the sake of the people.

In this section, it is worthy of noting that the Philippine public service is a very diverse playing

field since there are a lot of officials and employees with diverse personalities and attitudes as

some of them can be perceived as moral, while some are immoral. Those who are moral are also

diverse in a sense that they also have different ways of orientating themselves to the other people,

they may have different ways but at the end of the day, all of them were able distinguish right from

wrong, able to adhere to the laws and were able to prove that there are still ethical public servants.

It can also be observed that they are also changing since some part of this paper showcased that

public service started as being perceived as trustworthy but is now thought as a field that should

not be supported. However, it can also be noted that there are still those who cannot forward to

be morally upright and in relation to this, the next section wishes to discuss the reasons behind

their diverse and changing ways of portraying their jobs as public servants.

III. Changing Behaviors in this Changing Society

Since it has been learned from the previous part that the public service in the Philippines is

diverse and changing, this section will present the study of Alan Lawton entitled “Public Service

Ethics in the Changing World”. In the said study, the author cited another author (Hood) and listed

his suggested seven dimensions that changes the delivery of public service, seven of which are:

1. A shift towards disaggregation and

2. A shift towards greater competition,

3. Increased stress on private sector styles of management and

4. on discipline and frugality in the use public service,

5. More emphasis on visible ‘hands-on’ management,

 6. Increased use of formal measurable standards of management and

7. A greater emphasis on output controls

Having mentioned these seven dimensions, it is easy to point out that the changing behaviors

of those who are in the public service were actually brought by the increasing pressure of this

changing society. These expectations pushes some of them to strive more to please the people

that they serve, however at some point, these dimension which also pressure them results on the

other hand to unethical behaviors of public servants.

On the other hand, the same article offered another assumption on why and how the

behaviors of the public servants changes. The first one is that the changes brought by the

changing structures led to rise of other organizations which caused overlapping of works in the

field of public service. Another reason is that the rise of these organizations also caused to

creating new other partners, thus making these public servants confused on their purposes and

functions (Lawton, 2005). In this case, their confusions led them to have different types of

accountability depending on the behaviors that they portray. In connection to this, the article also

presented the table below:

Source: Lawton, A. (2005). Public service ethics in a changing world. Futures, 37(2-3), 231-243.

The table simply present that given the fact that the behaviors of the public officials change,

they also exist together with the other officials who also possess a different kind of attitude.
Following the previous assumptions mentioned, this can be explained by saying that when the

environment changes, behaviors of employees also changes in a diverse manner (Lawton, 2005).

On the other hand, the study also presented a data lowered into the individual level so as to

know if they had a big impact on the changing behaviors in public service as the society also

changes. The study used the exact following questions on the said study:

1. Are individuals per se becoming less virtuous?

2. Are public officials becoming less virtuous?

3. Should public officials be particularly virtuous?

4. What is relationship between the private and the public?

Lawton in his article answered the first question by stating that individuals or private

citizens are not directly becoming less virtuous but they are continuously lowering their regards

to the politicians and are now not that engaging on government- related activities.

On the other hand, he answered the second question by sharing that the said officials are

still trying to be virtuous in pursuit of the aim to protect the rights of the citizens as they serve

them, and in connection to this, he otherwise answered that public officials are expected to be

virtuous since it is his nature as a public official to use his learnings on public administration

regarding the use of morals so as to gain public trust.

Going on to the final question, it can be seen that the author answered it by telling that the

changes in the behavior of public servants cannot be directly affected by the private citizens since

there are boundaries that separate them, given the fact that the end of the day the public officials

are ought to behave in a legalistic manner while the private ones behave as if they have to protect

their personal ideals.

The author concluded by presenting a diagram below entitled “The interplay of ethical

values”
 Source: Lawton, A. (2005). Public service ethics in a changing world. Futures, 37(2-3), 231-243.

The table presented entails the idea that spheres in ethical values and the imbalance on

the presented dimensions may lead to change of the ethical behaviors. On the other hand, the

author also presented a table on the concluding part of the study which contains the causes of

ethical behavior.

Source: Lawton, A. (2005). Public service ethics in a changing world. Futures, 37(2-3), 231-243.

The table presents the requisites that will lead to the balance of the four dimensions so as to

mitigate change of ethical behaviors into unethical ones. The author briefly explained the table by

suggesting that:
 “To be moral is to exercise discretion and judgment.. By “act ethically”, we mean

that public administrators who adopt our integrated stance will internalise a perspective that

comprehends the ethical and technical aspects of their duties and obligations, and that

enables them to express, reflect and advocate normative concerns in both management and

policy. ”

The said quotation implies that it is still the person or the public servant who has the final

decision to be ethical or unethical, there may be factors that affect their behaviors but they still

have the chance of choosing what to do or not to do. At the end of the day, they are have been

always reminded of their duties and responsibilities as public servants.

IV. Wanted: Public Servants with Ethical Behaviors

The former part of this paper was able to present the ethical standards that should be adhered,

the stories of Filipino public servants and their diverse and changing behaviors and the theories

behind their changing and diverse behaviors in a changing society. It can be gleaned that the

Philippines was able to provide for mandates so as the people in the public service will be

informed of the attributes that they should possess and the duties that they are entitled to

accomplish. Additionally, it can be learned that public officials have their own behaviors, but they

vary on a note that some of them have ethical behaviors while some have unethical ones plus

their behaviors are also changing as they turn into ethical to unethical or vice versa. Furthermore,

those behaviors were actually brought about by the pressure as they were expected to offer a lot,

they also change their behavior due to the fact that the society is changing and the dimensions

that affect them directly and indirectly are also changing. In connection to this, it was initially

suggested that there should be a balance to these dimensions so that there will be a harmonious

relationship plus a great effect to each of them by making them “ethical”. On the other hand, the
next part of this paper will showcase different suggestions from other studies so as to improve

the Philippine public servants and so as to make them servants who live up to the mandates that

should always be adhered.

First article on the list is the article of Dwividi, entitled “Public Service Ethics in a Globalised

World”. In this article, he suggested that general propositions on how public service would be a

better field. He first stressed the importance of public officials with conscience since it is the spirit

that drives officials to be of great service to their public duty. He also insisted that Public Servants

should possess a caring behavior since it can be linked to the notion of promoting common good.

Another suggestion that the author offered is that public servants should be educated that they

the main reason of their belongingness to the field is none other than serving. On the other hand,

they should also defeat the notion of “ethical deficit” or the act of paying an extra sum just to

receive so as to receive another service from an official, which is actually contrary to the principles

of public service. The last one is to reward the leadership of the servants which are ethical so as

to uplift their morals.

The next article is entitled “Ethics and leadership skills in the public service” of Sonia Haq

which proposes the table below:

 Source: Haq, S. (2011). Ethics and leadership skills in the public service. Procedia-Social and Behavioral

Sciences, 15, 2792-2796.

The table presents that through possessing the mentioned leadership skills, enhanced

ethics will be achieve, thus reducing the risks of unethical behavior. For example, by having the

technical skills, servants would also be able to be transparent, accountable, responsive and

create a rule of law. Another example that the table presents is that having social intelligence

produces a servant who is fair and compassionate enough. Intrapersonal skills on the other hand

can be enabling tool for them to create values that are morally upright, while emotional intelligence

equates to the fact of possessing impartiality, integrity and the attribute of advocating the

advancement of public interest. Lastly, conceptual skills can be a great weapon for them to come

up with an ethical decision making that will resolve ethical dilemmas, thus making them reliable.

In short, having these leadership skills causes one to possess the attitude of discernment of

distinguishing ethical from what is unethical.

 Moving on to the next article, entitled “Ethics and the Public Service: An Annotated

Bibliography and Overview Essay” by Elizabeth Gunn, the article served a reminder that “public

interest” is the “supreme ethic or value” of public service. In accordance to this, he author also

mentioned the importance of “professional standards” so as to achieve “social equity”. The

importance of the organizational values together with ethical codes and legislations was also

highlighted, in connection to this educating the bureaucrats was also suggested on how attain the

betterment of public service.

“Responsive governance is key to the restoration of trust in government”, this is how

Brillantes et al. started his paper entitled “Restoring Trust and Building Integrity in the

Government: Issues and Concerns in the Philippines and Areas For Reform”. The quote emerged

since it has been evident that public trust has been continuing to lower. The said article can be

considered the most unique of all those that were mentioned before since it offers reformation of

framework of governance which is indicated below:

Source: Brillantes Jr, A. B., & Fernandez, M. T. (2011). RESTORING TRUST AND BUILDING INTEGRITY

IN GOVERNMENT: ISSUES AND CONCERNS IN THE PHILIPPINES AND AREAS FOR REFORM. International

Public Management Review, 12(2).

 The reformation was offered due to the fact that there has been a “trust deficit” and it was

believed that the only way to regain this trust in order to rescue public service is through this which

orientates the field as a new one. The figure above proposes a vision that reformation that will

involve “reformation of institutions, processes and procedures, reformation of mindsets,

paradigms and behavior will also beget a strong leadership and political will thus advancing active

citizen engagement”.

The pieces of information mentioned above are indeed beneficial, however they are still

hard to do and are somehow idealistic, but if only the Philippine public service is enthusiastic

enough to start following the steps, little by little, the country would probably be experiencing a

better service that it deserve while its officials are adhering to the ethical standards that make

them morally upright.

References:

Brillantes Jr, A. B., & Fernandez, M. T. (2011). RESTORING TRUST AND BUILDING INTEGRITY

IN GOVERNMENT: ISSUES AND CONCERNS IN THE PHILIPPINES AND AREAS FOR

REFORM. International Public Management Review, 12(2).

Dwivedi, O.P (2011). Public Service Ethics in a globalised world: the duty to serve and

responsibility to care. Indian Journal of Public Administration, 57(1), 1-14.

Gunn, E.M (1981). Ethics and the Public Service: An Annotated Bibliography and Overview

Essay. Public Personnel Management, 10(1), 172-178.

Haq, S. (2011). Ethics and leadership skills in the public service. Procedia-Social and Behavioral

Sciences, 15, 2792-2796.

Lawton, A. (2005). Public service ethics in a changing world. Futures, 37(2-3), 231-243.

Olivan, Daniel (2016, May 03). Working in the government: Stories from the frontline.

Rappler.com. Retreived from:

Working%20in%20the%20government_%20Stories%20from%20the%20frontline.html

Republic Act 11032. Retrieved from: https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/2018/05/28/republic -act-

n0-11032/

Republic Act 6713. Retrieved from: https://www.lawphil.net>ra_6713_1989

Republic Act No 9485. Retrieved from: https://www.lawphil.net>ra_9485_2007