Fairfax County supervisors on Monday took steps to retool a code of employee ethics that has been in place since 1963.

The county is considering a modern rewording for the document, which sets parameters for the behavior of the thousands of county staff. The current policy, which was drafted on the heels of an ethics scandal among Fairfax County officials four decades ago, is “outdated and has not been made as integral a part of the workplace as is desired,” according to a staff report. Supervisor Penelope Gross compares looking at the 1963 copy of the ethics policyto reading the Magna Carta.