To improve performance, Seoul to compose the “Ten Commandments of Integrity” for civil servants
According to Seoul citizens, the worst habits of civil servants are the apathetic expressions on their faces when they deal with civil complaints, and overseas training programs that are more like vacations.
During a three-week mobile phone survey that Seoul Metropolitan Government launched on Sep. 23, 1,527 members of the civil were asked what behaviors civil servants need to work on the most. In the survey, 713 (46.7%) respondents cited civil servants’ unfriendly attitudes, including uninterested facial expressions when dealing with civil complaints and an annoyed tone of voice when speaking on the telephone, Seoul announced on Oct. 19. This was the most common complaint in the survey, which allowed multiple responses. The next most common responses were civil servants who waste taxpayers’ money by sightseeing overseas and calling it “training” (559 respondents, 36.6%) and who repeat the same answer to people who keep filing the same complaint because it has not been addressed (474 respondents, 31%).
A significant number of respondents also complained about civil servants who transfer petitioners from one phone number to another and who never get around to calling back petitioners who leave their phone numbers while the civil servants are out of the office (418, 27.4%), who insist on the rules without providing a detailed explanation (406, 26.6%), who mistreat and talk down to the employees of subsidiaries, public companies and contractors (391, 25.6%), who stubbornly reject documents that could be corrected on the spot and demand that they be resubmitted from scratch (376, 24.6%) and who are unable to properly explain matters to petitioners because they do not understand their work area (342, 22.4%). Many respondents were also frustrated by announcements and notices intended for ordinary people that are composed of lists of complicated administrative terms (332, 21.7%).
During an independent survey in August and September, Seoul city government civil servants identified areas of the civil service that they thought should be corrected. These areas included the expectation that employees would not go home for the night until their superiors did, the tendency to inflate the turnout at various events by recruiting employees from other departments, churning out meaningless reports, authoritarian bosses who try to avoid responsibility and pass the buck, and work-related text messages being sent outside of work hours.
Seoul Metropolitan Government has decided to compose the “Ten Commandments of Integrity” based on the results of these surveys and print these in the city’s 2017 work notebook. The first five commandments will reflect the opinions of citizens, and the last five will reflect the opinions of city employees.
By Im In-tack, staff reporter
