Local Government Management

            Ordinarily, Local Government are complex work environments where leaders are confronted with all kinds of ethical conflicts yet, as the Australian Local Government Code of ethics asserts, not a single guideline can effectively solve this.

            Today, several guidelines have been instituted by associations, local governments themselves to deal with ethical dilemmas of local government management as it relates with media, budgets or as it researches or is researched and also as it governs its members. I want to focus on code of ethics governing member behavior in local government management.

            Several ethical guidelines where reviewed for this post and these included the principles advanced by the Local Government Managers Australia (LGMA); the International City/County Management Association-ICMA (2008) code of ethics; United Kingdom’s (UK’s) Department for Communities and Local Government consultation paper on codes of conduct for local authority members and employees and many others.

The LGMA is the leading professional association representing managers and aspiring managers in local government throughout Australia and Asia-Pacific. It was founded in October 1936 by Raymond West and, since that time, has continued to expand its charter and membership services and now has around 2,500 members.

According to available literature on the LGMA website, their main business is to “promote excellence through the advancement of local government management” (Local Government Managers Association-National Office, 2012). The ICMA on the other hand is no different. Founded in 1914, this association that now supports about 9000 ‘cities, town and county experts’ works to “create excellence in local governance by developing and fostering professional management to build sustainable communities that improve people’s lives worldwide” (International City/County Management Association , 2012).

            The following guidelines identified from both the ICMA Code of Ethics (2008) and the LGMA principles are considered potentially useful in facilitating organisation change in local government management here in Uganda. Secondly, their adaptation and or implementation in Uganda would mean more people benefiting from social services. Starting with the ICMA Code of Ethics that provides the foundation of local government today since 1924 when it was first adopted by the founding members; code eleven “Handle all matters of personnel on the basis of merit so that fairness and impartiality govern a member's decisions, pertaining to appointments, pay adjustments, promotions, and discipline” and code  twelve “Seek no favor; believe that personal aggrandizement or profit secured by confidential information or by misuse of public time is dishonest”. Let me discuss these two first.

            Code eleven, means two things in the Ugandan case, where the chief administrative officers (CAO) who are the CEOs of all local governments, will not discriminate in their selection, recruitment, deployment of human resources on the basis of sex, age, tribe or other social status of individuals seeking employment in local governments across the country. Code eleven also means that not only will equal opportunity exist in recruitment and deployment but that the best and capable staffs fill the positions of service provision at that critical level. Decentralization of governance in Uganda was in many cases misconstrued to mean creating employment for the ‘sons of the soil’ and many individuals got on to positions not because they were the most capable but often because they happened to be locals of the area. This has been done at the expense of quality service delivery.

            If code twelve is implemented by local governments in Uganda, it would mean: women and children are able to walk into health centers and receive free government services which are normally supposed to be free but because officials have negated this particular principle, they then ask for a reward for an action government would have normally paid them to do already. It also means that communities will not have to bribe officials for a borehole to be constructed in their neighborhood but that allocation of such a borehole would be on the basis of a well researched evidence of need for water in such a community. Code twelve also means that members of local government or the councilors will not use their position to influence to solicit for personal benefits from vendors or other entities supplying goods and services to the local governments.

            The next two principles from the LGMA are related to the two above: Principle A.6 ‘Objectivity and independence’ -

Members must be objective in undertaking their professional duties. Objectivity is a state of mind which imposes on an individual the obligation to be impartial, intellectually honest, and free of conflicts of interest. There are two aspects of objectivity and independence; these are the judgment which comes from being mentally independent and the freedom from personal relationships which avoid impairing or appearing to impair the ability of the member to exercise objectivity and independence. Safeguarding professional objectivity and independence is a matter of integrity.

 The last code of ethics considered for this post is code number A.2 Honesty, propriety and integrity -

Members must act with honesty, propriety and integrity in the pursuit of their professional duties. Honesty includes acting with sincerity and not lying, cheating or stealing. Propriety is to behave correctly as befits the duties of a member’s professional responsibilities and role. Integrity refers not only to knowing what [the right thing to do is] but having the moral strength and courage to act on one's convictions and on principle rather than expediency.

The two are particularly helpful in the Ugandan case where politics at all level of government, including local government, introduced the notion of tokenism. This paradigm of tokenism not only reduces community members from citizens to clients but equally robs communities of full right and power to demand accountability from their leaders in local governments.

I would personally embody these last two ethical principles and I would, given chance, introduce them as part of organisation change. I note, however that, there are still some civil servants who have always sought to remain objective, independent, polite, humble, just, and honest. The frustrations with trying to be this type of person is in the fact the social norms of those around them are not the same as theirs. Changing the social norms around them in the form of organisation change would be the ideal.

Code eleven highlighted above would however prove challenging to implement in the Ugandan typical rural setting. There are local governments so remotely located with no amenities like electricity, water and entertainment. In some western districts of Uganda for instance, even though job adverts are published as widely as possible, no one applies to go because of the fore mentioned. Chief executives of such districts and their elected leaders end up head hunting for ‘born of the area’ or ‘sons/daughters of the soil’; challenging the issues of merit, objectivity and integrity of local governments.

Acting on conviction and principle is difficult where certain policies do not recognise those individual values. For instance, at my place of work, the organisation car does not carry non-staffs and where that has to happen, approval must be sought and obtained well in advance and a waiver form signed before such as person boards the vehicle. Here is a typical situation: you come across a mother in labour with no means of transport to the nearest health centre which is five kilometres away and your heart tells you to help; what a dilemma would this be? Does one follow their heart or stick to the rules?

At this moment, I think ethics is cannot be successfully practiced singly, one requires a change and commitment to it involving the whole group.

Bibliography

International City/County Management Association . (2012, May 5). Who we are. Retrieved from ICMA: http://icma.org/en/icma/about/organization_overview/who_we_are

Local Government Managers Association-National Office. (2012, May 6). Code of Ethics: Part A - Fundamental Principles . Retrieved from Local Government Managers Association: http://www.lgma.org.au/default/ethics_1

Ethical Violation

The concept of ethics is many times understood to be a private affair! It conjures different meanings to different people. To some people, it is for religious people (God’s business) or strict judges of behaviour of others (Institute of Ethics and Development Studies: Uganda Martyrs University, 2006, pp. 2-16). Whereas to others, as Fieser, (2003) it involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behaviour, to others, it is about values, morals, principles and accountabilities.

Whatever meaning is adopted, its application to leadership in organisations has seen many professions, associations and public institutions adopt unique practices that have over time been written or un written codes of conduct for members belonging to such organisations.

Ethical violations occur far too often in the different enterprises today so that codes of conducts in many organisations are simply irrelevant. This has in some instances created new cultures at the work places contrary to prescribed practices within the codes of conduct. The outcome of a survey reported by Al Gini (2004) as quoted by Hickman (2011) provides the best evidence here-that “because of the perceived low ethical standards of the executive class, workers feel justified in responding in kind…” and such responses will include not reporting for duty, stealing organisation property or diverting them, poor performance and many others.

In Uganda today, media reports and perception index conducted in the general public identify the institutions of police, judiciary and politics as avenues where the greatest violation of ethics take place. For this discussion, I will focus on an institution I had the chance to work with and one of its leaders.

This institution dealt with human rights, sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) among other issues. I had the privilege of working with them on mainstreaming gender and rights into their training curriculum and standard operating procedure (SOPs) or what you would call code of conduct while handling SGBV.

Women and girls were later interviewed in one district about their experiences with this institution staffs as they went to receive services that the institution offered at the time. This was in order to assess the effectiveness of previous interventions (mentioned above). The shocking revelations of the women: -

“The boss came in and found me being interviewed and he said to me, ‘what did you do that your husband had to beat you this much?’ I felt judged and knew I would never get any service or protection at all if the boss could speak like that”

In many parts of Africa just like in Uganda, wife beating for instance is so normalized because tolerance levels for such crimes is extremely high that a staff hired to provide protection services to victims of SGBV would normally not find it a problem to ask such a question in spite of the principles of non-judgemental attitude embedded within the ethical practice guide. Another lady had this to say: -

“Had it not to have been the strong will of the female officer; the boss wanted my file destroyed to kill the evidence. He had already negotiated with my husband who had also paid him some money. I would have just lost my child and property like that”

The said officer eventually lost his position when follow up was done, but the women continued to shun services offered by this institution giving them such a bad publicity.

This is how I see it: ethics as a concept appears to govern us more individually and interpersonally but in a public sphere, leaders’ decisions may pretty much be influenced by other forms of cultures and hypotheses based on other social considerations e.g. wife beating is a means to discipline a wife, women do not own property and many others-making ethical violation an all so easy task to accomplish in offices by the leaders.

Reference

Fieser, J. (2003, June 29). Ethics. Retrieved March 7, 2011, from The Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy: Ethics: http//www.iep.utm.edu/ethics/

Institute of Ethics and Development Studies: Uganda Martyrs University. (2006, March). Module 9 Ethics and African Development. Nkozi, Uganda: Uganda Martyrs University.