Topic Guide: Codes of Conduct

The Global Organization of Parliamentarians against Corruption (GOPAC). http://gopacnetwork.org/  

GOPAC is an international network of parliamentarians dedicated to good governance and combating corruption throughout the world. GOPAC facilitates an exchange of information and analysis, works towards establishing international benchmarks, and to improve public awareness through a combination of global pressure and national action. GOPAC established a Parliamentary Ethics and Conduct Global Task Force (GTF-PEC) to develop a policy position on parliamentary conduct, provide tools and training materials, and promote ethics and conduct regimes aimed at building greater public trust in parliamentarians. This task force produced a ground-breaking handbook on parliamentary ethics and conduct which has been widely disseminated since its publication in 2009.  

Ethics Resource Center (ERC). http://www.ethics.org/  

ERC is a non-profit, non-partisan research organisation dedicated to independent research that advances high ethical standards and practices in public and private institutions. It provides a range of resources for ethics and compliance officers from business and government. These include toolkits, publications, cutting-edge research and useful links. The Guide to Developing your Organisation's Code of Ethics and What to Do after your Code of Conduct is Written are particularly useful. ERC also produces a biennial national survey of ethics programmes, issues and culture using a national sample of employees in business and government.   

Inter-American Development Bank. http://www.iadb.org/en/topics/transparency/transparency-accountability-and-anticorruption,1162.html  

The Inter-American Development Bank fosters public sector ethics in two ways: through good governance mechanisms and working closely with countries to enforce the rule of law and fight corruption at both local and national levels. Within the framework of the bank's action plan to support countries' efforts to combat corruption and foster transparency, it contributes to the improvement of public policies and national plans for preventing and combating corruption. The bank seeks to strengthen the institutional capacity of governments by improving access to information, promoting targeted transparency in strategic sectors, modernising agencies of supreme, external and internal control and enhancing the oversight role of legislative bodies. As well as undertaking in-country projects, such as improving integrity in the selection of civil servants in Guatemala, the bank also produces useful research tools and a range of excellent studies, including Formulating and Implementing an Effective Code of Ethics: Comprehensive Guidance Manual for Public Institutions.  

Government Accountability Project. http://www.whistleblower.org/ 

A non-profit organisation whose mission is to protect the public interest by promoting government and corporate accountability through advancing occupational free speech and ethical conduct, defending whistleblowers, and actively promoting government and corporate accountability. See also: Public Concern at Work (UK) and the Open Democracy Advice Centre (South Africa).