Governmental agencies love to boast about their transparency, controls, the services they provide, yet their lack of ethics and self-serving behavior is quite disturbing.
Take the Office of Veterans Affairs as a main focal point for the moment. It is incredible to fathom that they employ over 280,000 employees.
How did we let our government grow to such monstrous and unmanageable levels?
The very idea that our veterans who bravely served our country were treated so poorly by VA employees should make us all pause for concern. Their indifference to values and ethics was simply astonishing.
There are many toxic VA locations to pick on for sure but the Phoenix hospital might have won the horserace hands down. Pending reports by those in the know have suggested that dozens of veterans died while awaiting care of some kind.
Those that were admitted seemed to be treated in unsanitary and ugly conditions bordering on dangerous.
What has the been the VA’s response to this shabby treatment of our veterans?
They have punished only a total of eight employees thus far and the current U.S. Administration seems quite comfortable in not immediately fixing this corrupt and broken system.
There is a long trail of mismanagement, entitlement, and indifference to ethics going back many decades.
At the heart of this horrible problem putting our loyal and courageous veteran’s health at further risk was a culture of falsely manipulating numbers making various clinic and hospital locations appear to overly efficient. These behaviors cannot be called anything else but fraud.
The Inspector General’s Office has uncovered employee bonuses linked to covering up patient wait times!!
What new leadership can bring to the table to fix the levels of systemic and moral rot at the VA is very much open to debate.
Government agencies tend to be arrogant, protective of their jobs, and self-serving.
Various whistleblowers have come forward describing this type of culture at the Department of Veteran Affairs and the idea that the “VA was too focused on reporting good numbers” should make us all numb.
We can ill-afford to ignore their experiences, input, and prescriptions for reform. Furthermore, it is imperative that the Administration and Congress severely punish any VA employee who benefitted from their fraudulent conduct; terminations, fines, victim restitution, and jail time must be options for consideration.
There are government employees who practice good ethics and contribute quality work and I do not wish to denigrate them in any way.
Slowing employee growth in the government sector and or eliminating needless jobs has not been successful in recent decades.
In my opinion, this can only exacerbate an indifference to ethics and entitlement.
We have seen countless examples of government overreach and scandalous behavior in recent years including:
1) The Internal Revenue Service proactively targeting conservative groups.
2) The State Department funded a group dedicated to defeating Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
3) White House Advisor, John Podesta, potentially violating ethical rules by helping to formulate a new White House policy that attempted to end any future drilling for oil on Alaska’s Artic National Wildlife Refuge.
The ethics we practice on a daily basis is on a personal and organizational level.
There can be no place for arrogance, greed, or entitlement and these are truly poisonous traits.
I urge you to review your own ethics and the organizations you represent. What can be more important that morals, principles, and values?
They are the core to our moral compasses that permit us to effectively navigate through rough seas and deal with dilemmas of all kinds.
Review your moral compass each day and ask whether you are on-track or off-track.
I have personally found how important faith in God is and the key core component of my moral compass.
Do your best every day and always be accountable and responsible for the conduct you exhibit.
Be well/blessings, Mark
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