Good governance in the public sector is the cornerstone for efficient and effective organisational performance and is underpinned by a number of accountability requirements.
Maintaining a workplace culture with strong ethics and integrity is part of a sound governance framework and is fundamental to good organisational performance.
Integrity frameworks provide a systemic and comprehensive approach to examining the management systems and environment which are in place to expose, deter and prevent corruption.
They can help create an understanding about the necessary consistency between a rules and process-based public management system on the one hand, and the influence of an agency’s leadership and culture in shaping people’s behaviour on the other.
This research paper examines the integrity frameworks in place to detect and prevent corruption in Victorian public sector agencies and concludes that corruption and its prevention is generally not on the radar of the responding agencies.
In 2013, the Independent Broad-based Anticorruption Commission (IBAC) commissioned the Australian National University (ANU) to review the
integrity frameworks within Victorian public sector (VPS) agencies.
Agencies were asked to identify and describe their integrity frameworks, and provide factual and documentary examples of potential risks of corruption and the strategies in place to identify and mitigate these risks. Thirty-six agencies provided responses from 54 requests.
The aim of the research was to provide baseline information on current systems and practices used to detect and prevent corruption in public sector
agencies in Victoria.
This paper outlines the VPS agencies’ responses on risk assessment, levels of perceived corruption risk and instances of corrupt conduct, disclosure mechanisms, prevention and detection measures, training, reporting and education of the public.