Scandals involving public officials have often captured world attention. Most of these scandals are as a result of the deteriorating ethical behaviours of the public officials who have indulged themselves into all sorts of malpractices. There is therefore a genuine demand that public sector institutions should strengthen ethics, integrity, transparency, accountability and professionalism, in order to protect public resources and enhance public sector performance. This paper discusses the concepts of ethics, accountability, transparency, integrity and professionalism in the public service. It further attempts to discuss some practices and behaviours which undermine the ethical behaviours of public servants by putting special emphasis on corruption, conflict of interest and human resource management malpractices. It also discusses the measures which can be taken to reduce the malpractices. Specifically, the paper discusses the Uganda situation with regard to ethics, accountability, transparency, integrity and professionalism in the Country’s public service. It notes that although the current Uganda government has attempted to put in place a number of institutional measures to combat evils like corruption, the success of such measures will largely depend on the serious implementation and enforcement mechanisms which the government must put in place.

Introduction

Since Northcote – Trevelyan laid down the foundations of the modern civil service in the mid-nineteenth century, a concern with establishing the ground rules for public servants and ensuring that they conform with a core set of standards in their everyday behaviour has been a perennial theme in public administration (Pratchett, 1999). As observed by Sakr Ashour (2004), a consensus has developed world – wide over the importance of reforming public sector institutions to strengthen ethics, integrity, transparency, accountability and professionalism and to prevent and combat corruption. Such reforms are crucial to protecting public resources, enhancing public sector performance, and strengthening the government’s role in orchestrating development and providing basic services, indeed there is a greater awareness of the need for ethics, accountability, transparency, integrity and professionalism in public life today. According to the study carried out by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs...(UN DESA, 2001) in 10 African countries, this realization has been supported by the emergence of a consensus that good governance and sound public administration underpin sustainable development.

The impact of unethical and criminal practices in the public service is unsupportable in the development of nations, resulting in the loss of confidence in public institutions and the erosion of the rule of law itself. Furthermore, the notions of ethics and accountability according to Ayee (1998) have become more critical in public administration, because of the continued public sector institutional failing that are attributed to public servants’ lack of moral values, which in turn, are associated with weak values and weak administrative systems. It is now a general reality that the quest of the public for responsibility and accountability in government has been stimulated in most democratic states (Kuye and Mafunisa, 2003). Some of these have been triggered by events involving politicians and bureaucrats.