REMAINING TRUE TO OUR VALUES
Dawson Creek
Being a trusted, talented and modern public service requires us to constantly adapt to the world around us. We need to be responsive to the emerging issues and opportunities that present themselves. At the same time, there are many aspects of our work that endure and need not change. One of these is the set of BC Public Service Corporate Values defined by our employees: courage, passion, teamwork, service, accountability, curiosity and, above all, integrity.
These values were mapped out more than a decade ago, but they are increasingly relevant in today’s world as we face ever more complex challenges to our work and how we do it. By fully embracing these values in how we approach our jobs as individual professionals and how we reimagine our collective role, we can evolve while remaining true to who and what we are as a public service.
We cannot be a more creative, effective and innovative public service without living these values – and living these values compels us to be all those things. To harness the full potential and richness of a more diverse and inclusive public service, we need to unleash the true spirit of these values. And being true to that spirit will also inevitably make us a more inclusive place to work. Our values compel us to always strive to be better, and at the same time they are an integral part of what makes us better.
One of the unique challenges of being a public servant is that it requires each of us to set aside our own personal perspectives, opinions and interests in favour of the public interest as represented by a democratically elected government. That is the frame of reference in which we apply the public service values – how do we each apply our passion, curiosity, courage and sense of teamwork, service and accountability in a way that upholds the integrity required of us as impartial public servants?
In an ever-changing and often uncertain context, that can be all the more challenging. But these values are stars by which we can navigate even when our journey takes us beyond what is familiar and comfortable. They help us remain true to our enduring purpose even as we explore the full promise and potential of the public service that lies on the horizon.
