There is a heavy ethical responsibility on the public servants because they occupy positions of power, handle huge amounts of public funds, and their decisions have wide-ranging impact on society and environment. What steps have you taken to improve your ethical competence to handle such responsibility?

Ethical competence can be defined as a combination of skills, capacity and high degree of professionalism. Public servants have to perform critical and tedious administrative works. Sometimes they even need to delegate responsibilities to other officials and team members. They have to manage huge funds and require listening to viewpoints of the public and political leaders. Under such circumstances, ethical competence plays a vital role in ensuring task completion in effective manner. In order to enhance ethical competence, I will adopt following steps:
Steps taken to improve ethical competence to handle the responsibilities

• Social Influence: India has no dearth of honest civil servants. They have stood the test of the challenges mentioned above. I am actively following honest civil servants like metro man Shreedharan to build a strong ethical competence and commitment towards public welfare.
• Awareness: As a common citizen today I face various challenges in engaging with the bureaucracy and governmental organisations. These lessons learnt will aid in developing of strong ethical competence to deliver the services efficiently.
• NGO interaction: NGO are the bridge between the executive and citizen. I was associated with NGOs like CRY and India against corruption which has aided me developing the empathy and sympathy towards the vulnerable sections of the society.

My experiences of the present when I am in the one end of the governance as a citizen has provided me with lessons and awareness which will aid me in developing of competencies to serve the people better and enhance the standards of governance when I am in the other end as civil servant.

Topics: GS-IV: Ethics and Human Interface