Civil Service Values: Values, accountability and sources of guidance

Core values of public life

Mains 2019 asked: What are the basic principles of public life? The UK Committee on Standards in Public Life published The Seven Principles of Public Life on 31 May 1995, often called the Nolan principles: Selflessness, Integrity, Objectivity, Accountability, Openness, Honesty and Leadership. For example, under Objectivity, holders of public office must act and take decisions impartially, fairly and on merit, using the best evidence and without discrimination or bias (GOV.UK).

Committee on Standards in Public Life, 31 May 1995 (GOV.UK).

Mains 2017 asked to Examine the relevance of the following in the context of civil service: Transparency, Accountability, Fairness and justice, Courage of conviction and Spirit of service. Give one line of meaning and one example each, for example courage of conviction: refusing to certify an unsafe building despite pressure.

Mains 2026 asked about a professor who generates a Ph.D. evaluation report using Artificial Intelligence and submits it with small changes, from the perspective of accountability and integrity. Issues: the evaluator, not the tool, is accountable; passing off AI output as personal judgment is dishonest; confidential theses may be exposed. Proper course: disclose any tool use, read and judge the work personally, or ask for more time.

Accountability, politics and bureaucratic morality

Mains 2014 asked: What does ‘accountability’ mean in the context of public service? It means being answerable for decisions and results to superiors, legislature, courts and citizens. Measures for individual accountability: clear duties, performance appraisal, citizen feedback. For collective accountability: outcome budgets, social audits, RTI disclosures and parliamentary oversight.

Mains 2013: It is often said that ‘politics’ and ‘ethics’ do not go together. A balanced view: politics without ethics becomes a contest for power alone, but many leaders show that principled politics is possible; ethics in politics is built through transparent funding, internal party democracy and an alert citizenry.

Mains 2016 quoted the view that Max Weber said that it is not wise to apply to public administration the sort of moral and ethical norms we apply to matters of personal conscience, and that bureaucracy may have its own morality. Analyse: impersonal rules protect fairness and prevent personal whims; but blind obedience can lead to grave wrongs, so personal conscience must remain a check on illegal or inhuman orders.

Mains 2023 asked to differentiate between Mains 2023 ‘coercion’ and ‘undue influence’ in the work environment. Coercion is force or threat (a boss threatening transfer unless a file is cleared); undue influence is misuse of a position of trust or power to sway a decision without open threats (a senior hinting that a relative’s application should be favoured). Both destroy free, fair decision-making.

Laws, rules, regulations and conscience

Mains 2020 asked to Distinguish between laws and rules and the role of ethics in formulating them. Laws are made by the legislature and bind everyone; rules are made by the executive under a law to carry it out. Ethics shapes both: laws reflect society’s moral minimum, and good rules are fair, clear and humane in practice.

Teaching table.

Mains 2016 called Law and Ethics are considered to be the two tools for controlling human conduct. Law works through external sanctions; ethics through inner conviction and social

approval. Mains 2015 added: A mere compliance with law is not enough, asking for an act ethically right but not legal (a citizen breaking a night curfew to rush a neighbour to hospital) and legally right but not ethical (evicting a poor family in heavy rain on the last legal day).

Mains 2023 asked: Is conscience a more reliable guide when compared to laws, rules and regulations in the context of ethical decision-making? Answer: conscience is valuable where rules are silent, but it can be shaped by bias; the best guide is conscience trained by constitutional values and checked by law. Mains 2025 quoted Vivekananda: The strength of a society is not in its laws, but in the morality of its people.