Topic Guide: Public Sector Integrity

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). www.oecd.org  

OECD supports public sector integrity in several key areas. Its guidelines, toolkits and analysis on conflict of interest management and the revolving door have been pioneering. The hub on conflict of interest should be the first port-of-call for all those seeking to quickly get to grips with the subject. The OECD also provides excellent studies on codes of conduct implementation and tools for public officials' asset declarations. The organisation has accrued both expert knowledge and an impressive repository of best practice examples to support both OECD member states and non-member countries to improve public sector probity.    

Open Government Partnership (OGP). http://www.opengovpartnership.org/  

OGP is a multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption and harness new technologies to strengthen governance. It was launched in 2011 and, since then, has grown from 8 to 65 participating countries. In all of these countries, government and civil society are working together to develop and implement ambitious open government reforms. The OGP provides excellent topic guides to a range of both thematic and sector-focussed anti-corruption issues. These offer a brief introduction to the topic, model commitments and legislation, expert organisations, standards and guidance and a list of good practice examples from around the world. Relevant topic guides on public sector ethics include: asset disclosure and conflicts of interest, right to information, public services and whistleblower protection.  

Transparency International. https://www.transparency.org/  

Transparency International works extensively on issues relating to public sector ethics. The organisation has a programme dedicated to public sector integrity, and offers an introductory topic guide to the issue. The plain language guide is a helpful introduction to many of the key issues. Moreover, in recent years Transparency International has published prominent features on codes of conduct, working papers on asset declarations and articles on conflicts of interest. Finally, the Anti-Corruption Helpdesk offers a wealth of background papers on a whole host of public sector integrity problem.            

Council of Europe: Group of States against Corruption (GRECO). http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/moni...  

GRECO monitors its 49 member states’ efforts to tackle and prevent corruption with regards to the Council of Europe’s legal standards. It is a peer-review mechanism and each member state is evaluated on an equal basis in rounds which focus on specific themes. GRECO is now in its fourth round, which was launched in 2012. The fourth round is focusing on: (1) ethical principles and rules of conduct, (2) conflicts of interest, (3) prohibition or restriction of certain activities, (4) declaration of assets, income, liabilities and interests and (5) enforcement of the rules regarding conflicts of interest. Regulations for MPs, judges and prosecutors are all evaluated in great detail against these criteria. So far, around half of country evaluation and compliance reports have been completed, and these can be found here.  

The Council of Europe also has many sub-entities that produce reports and opinions, such as the Venice Commission and the Consultative Council of European Judges. http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/cooperation/ccje/textes/Avis_en.asp  

Organization of American States (OAS). http://www.oas.org/juridico/english/fightcur.html  

The Anti-Corruption Portal of the Americas, developed by the Organization of American States, provides information on transparency in public administration and anti-corruption cooperation, including developments on the implementation of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption. The portal also includes links to the web pages of the member states’ agencies with responsibilities in this area.  

Three sections of the website are particularly helpful. First, the set of legal tools developed to improve national anti-corruption frameworks across the Americas, which includes legislative guidelines on conflicts of interest, declaration of assets and liabilities, proper use of state resources and monitoring and oversight bodies. Secondly, OAS provides model laws on the declaration of interests, income, assets and liabilities of persons performing public functions and on the facilitation and encouragement of reporting of acts of corruption and to protect whistleblowers and witnesses. Finally, there is a good section on training in ethical values for public officials.   

UK Committee on Standards in Public Life. www.public-standards.gov.uk  

The Committee on Standards in Public Life is an advisory non-departmental public body for ethical standards across the whole of public life in the UK. It monitors and reports on issues relating to the standards of conduct of all public office holders. Recently, the committee has produced reports on ethics in practice: promoting ethical standards in public life and ethical standards for providers of public services.  

Integrity Action. http://www.integrityaction.org/  

Integrity Action is an active network of committed NGOs, universities and policy makers that works with governments, media organisations, businesses to identify ways of making integrity work in some of the world’s challenging settings. Although the scope is broader than just the public sector, Integrity Action's democratic governance programme focuses on raising standards in public life by building capacity among citizens to monitor probity in the public sector. Integrity Action has produced several reports on public service delivery problems in selected countries, available here.  

Centre for Ethics, Harvard University. http://ethics.harvard.edu/government-law

The Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University seeks to advance teaching and research on ethical issues in public life. An active online community on the site runs a project on ethics in government, including working papers, podcasts, videos, research projects and blogs. Although academic in nature, many of the working papers have useful insights for practitioners.      

Institute for Global Ethics. http://www.globalethics.org/  

The Institute for Global Ethics is a North American organisation which provides training, consultancy and ethics assessments to a range of organisations, in both the private and public sector. It recently completed a project on the role of virtues in determining organizational culture.    

The Centre for Public Integrity. http://www.publicintegrity.org/  

The Center for Public Integrity is one of the largest non-partisan, non-profit investigative news organisations in the United States. It seeks to reveal abuses of power, corruption and betrayal of public trust by powerful public and private institutions. As such, it does not work directly to improve probity in public office, but has a range of expertise and publications on money and politics, government waste, fraud, abuse and transparency in government decision making.  

Council on Governmental Ethics Laws. http://www.cogel.org/

A professional organisation for government agencies, organisations, and individuals with responsibilities or interests in governmental ethics, elections, campaign finance, lobby laws and freedom of information. Its members include: (1) governmental entities, (2) educational institutions, (3) organisations such as law firms and corporations and (4) honorary members.  

City Ethics. http://www.cityethics.org/

City Ethics is the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws’ project to spearhead the development of municipal ethics programmes across the US and to help cities govern ethically. Its purpose is to provide a centralised location for information and resources for all forms of local government ethics programmes. It has designed a model code of conduct for local government officials, which can be found here.  

World Bank. www.worldbank.org  

The World Bank is one of the largest players in the field of public sector integrity, providing US$3.85 billion in 2013 alone to help countries improve the performance and accountability of their core public sector institutions. Generally speaking, the bank's focuses less on encouraging ethical behaviour in public office than on resolving the monetary implications of inappropriate behaviour by officials via mechanisms such as asset recovery and public financial management reform. The bank has been a leader in the field of interest and asset disclosure, with notable work having being done by the Financial Integrity Unit and the StAR Initiative.  

The bank offers a range of excellent resources. These include a central hub for anti-corruption work on the public sector, providing an overview of all the World Bank's expertise and lists of all relevant projects and publications. The hub provides a platform for national anti-corruption authorities, offers tools and datasets to help practitioners, and provides a bibliography of corruption research as well as individual country corruption reports. Also invaluable is the Financial Disclosure Law Library, a leading collection of laws and regulations on disclosure requirements for public officials’ assets and business activities.