In 2012, the Commission engaged the St James Ethics Centre to conduct a stocktake of ethics issues, policies and control systems in NSW public sector agencies.
The purpose of the work was twofold - to provide baseline information, against which future trends could be compared, and to inform the Commission’s plan to promote and maintain the core values.
On the Commission’s behalf, St James interviewed 63 individual employees from 32 public sector agencies and conducted focus groups for a further 160 employees, drawn from all nine clusters.
Participants were asked what ethical issues they had faced or observed in their workplaces. Their comments were not confined to current or recent experiences, but covered a period of years.
Concurrently, St James analysed a sample of ethics-related policies and codes of conduct, from across the sector, mapping them to the legislated Ethical Framework for the public sector.
The ethics stocktake findings and recommendations are contained in a final report written by the St James Ethics Centre which is available below.
Ethics Stocktake report