a culture of entitlement
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Justice John Gomery's report is, ultimately, about failure.
The report represents an opportunity to step back and assess our collective failure to learn from the past and our failure to take full ethical responsibility for those actions and inactions that take place in our orbit. Gomery speaks to a deep moral failure that is summarized in his expression "the culture of entitlement." In the end, it is a failure to adequately socialize the communitarian principles of public service among key decision-makers at the apex of the political process that should concern us most. The blame and the shame are much broader in scope than any one party, any one order of government or set of institutions.
Three decades of neo-liberal approaches to public management have contributed to the pervasive failures of public bureaucracies. The much-vaunted reforms associated with the public service, downsizing, flatlining, outsourcing, deregulation, and public-private partnerships were heralded as advancements. The promise of those who "reinvented" government was that citizens would be treated as consumers who could demand "best practices" from public officials retrained in the efficient ways of the private sector. There would be transparency and "shareholder-style" accountability. Public servants and public bureaucracies have, indeed, adapted to the ways of the private sector. But they have done so in ways that were unanticipated and seriously flawed.
Increasingly tolerant of personal gain and advantage, unconcerned with unprecedented levels of socio-economic inequality, willing to turn a blind eye to wrongdoing, and unwilling to insist that the good of the community must trump private advantage, the culture of entitlement has become more than a marginal subculture among a few bad apples. It is now widespread throughout systems of public bureaucracy.
However, there remain excellent public servants and political leaders of profound personal integrity. Working heroically to sustain an adequate public service, these men and women understand that transparency is no good when key political actors can readily shift the frame through which citizens scrutinize the political system. They realize that accountability is too often a matter of limited damage control after the fact and that what is really needed is a personal sense of responsibility toward the public.
Transparency and accountability are no good in a system that systematically rewards personal advantage, cost-cutting and superficial models of efficiency. We need to speak of a renewed idealism of public service. Untrammelled by references to the world of private transaction, this renewed vision of civic responsibility, duty, quiet efficiency and loyalty must be grounded in a simple acknowledgement of the public as the political people and nothing more nor less than that.
Justice John Gomery's report is, ultimately, about failure.
The report represents an opportunity to step back and assess our collective failure to learn from the past and our failure to take full ethical responsibility for those actions and inactions that take place in our orbit. Gomery speaks to a deep moral failure that is summarized in his expression "the culture of entitlement." In the end, it is a failure to adequately socialize the communitarian principles of public service among key decision-makers at the apex of the political process that should concern us most. The blame and the shame are much broader in scope than any one party, any one order of government or set of institutions.
Three decades of neo-liberal approaches to public management have contributed to the pervasive failures of public bureaucracies. The much-vaunted reforms associated with the public service, downsizing, flatlining, outsourcing, deregulation, and public-private partnerships were heralded as advancements. The promise of those who "reinvented" government was that citizens would be treated as consumers who could demand "best practices" from public officials retrained in the efficient ways of the private sector. There would be transparency and "shareholder-style" accountability. Public servants and public bureaucracies have, indeed, adapted to the ways of the private sector. But they have done so in ways that were unanticipated and seriously flawed.
Increasingly tolerant of personal gain and advantage, unconcerned with unprecedented levels of socio-economic inequality, willing to turn a blind eye to wrongdoing, and unwilling to insist that the good of the community must trump private advantage, the culture of entitlement has become more than a marginal subculture among a few bad apples. It is now widespread throughout systems of public bureaucracy.
However, there remain excellent public servants and political leaders of profound personal integrity. Working heroically to sustain an adequate public service, these men and women understand that transparency is no good when key political actors can readily shift the frame through which citizens scrutinize the political system. They realize that accountability is too often a matter of limited damage control after the fact and that what is really needed is a personal sense of responsibility toward the public.
Transparency and accountability are no good in a system that systematically rewards personal advantage, cost-cutting and superficial models of efficiency. We need to speak of a renewed idealism of public service. Untrammelled by references to the world of private transaction, this renewed vision of civic responsibility, duty, quiet efficiency and loyalty must be grounded in a simple acknowledgement of the public as the political people and nothing more nor less than that.
-- Paul Nesbitt-Larking, Toronto Star (2005-11-03)
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posted by þΛųL jØŋαŦhΛŋ @ 07:00
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