Page 968 - Week 04 - Thursday, 3 May 2007
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In June 2006 at an Institute of Public Administration of Australia seminar on open government the commonwealth and ACT Ombudsman, Professor John McMillan, said that “greater openness and transparency, under FOI and other mechanisms, has been good for government, good for society and good for democracy”. He further said:
In my view the administrative law framework, conferring upon the public the right to obtain government documents and to challenge and seek review of government decisions, is an important part of the explanation as to why the quality of government administration in Australia has steadily improved over the last two decades. It has helped to make government responsive, interactive, careful, reflective, evidence-based, and accountable.
The legislative basis of the ACT government, the Public Sector Management Act 1994, provides key elements of ethos through its sections 6 and 9. I mentioned sections 6 and 7 yesterday in this place. Section 6 provides a service-wide statement of ethos encompassing the public service role, relationships and key responsibilities and sections 7 and 8 provide organisational and management principles for public administration and employment matters. Section 9 sets out the ethical obligations of the individual public servant.
The Public Sector Management Act 1994 implies a role in service to the public, responsiveness to the requirements of the government and the needs of the public and accountability to the government for the ways in which functions are performed. At the same time these provisions are included as values and principles rather than stated in terms of role or relationship and are included with values and principles such as “fairness and integrity” and “efficiency and effectiveness”.
As stated, section 9 of the Public Sector Management Act 1994 provides for a code of ethics. The code of ethics is supported and supplemented by administrative law mechanisms, including freedom of information, by whistleblowing legislation, by auditing and monitoring regimes and by provision of training in the application of ethical standards. The public sector management standard 4, ethics, provides practical guidance, including staff obligations and, where appropriate, roles of supervisors and managers.
The concept of accountability is complex. In as much as a public servant acts under the delegated authority of a minister in a matter of policy, the public servant is responsible to that minister, who is in turn directly accountable to the legislature. However, in matters of administration ACT public servants are directly accountable for their actions through standard administrative review mechanisms such as the Ombudsman, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, the ACT Auditor-General and internal agency audit committees. With these robust auditing systems an ACT public servant’s duty is to serve the public and their interests through serving the elected government of the day. I think I also mentioned that yesterday.
The ACT also operates within a financial accountability framework, the Financial Management Act 1996. This provides the legislative foundation that enacts financial accountability across the service. To ensure it remains robust and effective in its ability to regulate the conduct of the territory’s fiscal operations, this government has
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