The APS Integrity Taskforce (the Taskforce) was established by Secretaries Board to take a ‘bird’s-eye’ view of the APS integrity landscape, identify gaps and look for opportunities to learn from and build upon the important work already underway across the service. Secretaries Board agreed the Taskforce would examine three action areas:

The three action areas are interdependent, and all are necessary to be a public service with integrity at its heart. While the Taskforce has made recommendations on all three areas, there is a particular emphasis on the unique role of APS leadership as cultural architects for integrity. Our capability uplift recommendations therefore largely focus on SES. Integrity requires action at all levels, but without the right tone and demonstration from the top there will be no lasting impact. We have largely limited our focus to the APS, with some additional recommendations to ensure that the third parties we deal with uphold our integrity standards, and to support ministers’ offices where relevant.

The APS has strong conduct and financial probity frameworks which need to be understood and enforced. Compliance processes are important, and leaders need to adopt a positive attitude to internal assurance and external oversight. But this alone is not enough. Being overly focused on formal processes and rules risks overlooking the informal leadership-based efforts and communication that have an important impact on the ethical culture of organisations.

Where cultures are based on fear and silence, integrity cannot thrive. If the APS is serious about preventing problems, leaders need to provide the psychological safety necessary for staff to raise issues, ask questions, and point out when lines are crossed without risk of negative consequences. This means giving leaders the skills, behaviours and communication tools to build respect and trust. Fostering psychological safety also has a range of other important benefits including promoting mental well-being, curiosity and innovation. The follow-up and the quality of management’s response to staff concerns is crucial. We need to support leaders to respond effectively, with curiosity, with empathy and without defensiveness. Two key reasons that staff do not speak up are the fear of retaliation and the perception that speaking up is futile. Integrity conversations need to become a part of the everyday conversations and work of our teams.

Leaders need to create an environment that empowers staff to perform their roles as impartial advisers in the public interest. The relationship of trust with ministers and their advisers is crucial. Ministers want, and generally appreciate, candid advice that is evidence-based and solutions-focused. We have recommended bolstering work to assist ministers’ offices to better understand the different and complementary role played by the public service. Equally, our staff need to feel supported by the senior executive in providing frank and fearless advice to the government of the day.

A significant theme for the Taskforce has been the importance of public servants understanding, applying and balancing their unique role serving the Government, the Parliament and the Australian people. Role clarity, combined with ethical decision making, tempers the mindset of delivery ‘at all costs’ and the integrity risks it entails. Uniform induction addressing the fundamentals of being a public servant is available but needs to be more consistently implemented with a stronger focus on integrity and dealing with ambiguity. We also need leaders to give more than lip service to the importance of this obligation.

A pro-integrity culture can only exist where we have clear systems and accountability that support the behaviour we want to see. We need to ensure our people have the support to do the right thing at the right time. Government lawyers already play an important role in ensuring the public service can implement the Government’s policies lawfully. But the law was never intended to be the maximum standard of behaviour required. Legality is the minimum standard expected of public servants. More work is needed to make sure APS staff not only uphold their obligations but are empowered to model the highest ethical standards of behaviour.

The pro-integrity culture we are building in the APS needs to be mirrored in the external partnerships we have with consultants, contractors and service providers. The government is committed to reducing APS reliance on consultants through building public service capability, but the need for external expertise and surge workforces will remain. External labour undertaking work on behalf and in support of government should be held to the same values as public servants. Strengthening the integrity of our relationships with external providers will also require development of specialist skills for APS staff in procurement and contracting roles. Our people need skills to effectively manage contracts so the APS gets the product it wants and value for money from its partners. Greater visibility across the APS of who we contract with and their past performance will increase transparency and help manage potential conflicts of interest.

There are a number of different Commonwealth integrity and oversight bodies which would benefit from thinking and acting more like a system. To enable strategic discussions on risk and learning, actions need to be coordinated and integrity roles and responsibilities clarified across the Service. All the players need to be connected and work together to better support a pro integrity culture. There is cross-sectoral knowledge, insight and experience within integrity policy and oversight agencies. This knowledge could forge a greater strategic approach to integrity and system-wide learning across the APS.

The Taskforce is not recommending the APS reinvent the wheel. There is a wealth of good integrity practice to draw from within agencies. We have identified good practices in embedding institutional integrity within individual agencies and looked for opportunities to scale those examples (and share them) across the service. There are varying levels of integrity maturity across Commonwealth agencies. More guidance and support is needed to implement the array of integrity obligations that apply across the Commonwealth public sector. The Taskforce has developed an Integrity Good Practice Guide to inform more unified approaches and promote information-sharing between agencies.