Strengthen the integrity, culture and capability across the public sector in accordance with legislative requirements
The Commission delivered updates to three major suites of integrity-related model policies to give clearer guidance to employees and employers around their obligations regarding:
- gifts, benefits and hospitality,
- conflict of interest, and
- declaration of private interests.
To further support employees across the sector to understand the public sector and integrity requirements, the Commission developed three new eLearns on the topics:
- Working in government,
- Integrity, and
- the Code of conduct.
In addition to its published guidance, the Commission provided advice to employers and employees to support the public sector to comply with its obligations in respect of the Voice to Parliament referendum.
The Commission responded to queries on executive employment, maintaining the standard contract and handbooks to support a consistent approach to public sector executive employment. The Commission also trained staff from departments and public entities in how to apply the respective executive classification frameworks and developed an eLearn to support assessors to apply the frameworks.
Consistent with its legislative obligations in respect of reviews of employment-related actions, the Commission received 24 requests for reviews. Two applications received in this period were resolved via informal resolution, one application was formally accepted, and one review was commenced but not completed in the financial year.
The Commission published new guidance on portfolio governance relationships between departments and entities. This guidance provides practical information about respective obligations and suggests tangible ways of ensuring both parties work effectively together to meet the requirements of ministers and the broader community.
Related to public entities, the Commission issued an updated version of the Code of Conduct for directors of Victorian public entities – the first update since 2016. This update incorporates lobbying requirements recommended by the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC), as well as updating the language so it is clearer and easier to read.
The Commission also delivered three online sessions for board directors of public entities to improve their awareness of integrity obligations with a combined audience of more than 600 people. At each, an overview of general public sector board obligations was provided, followed by a panel of experienced board directors who talked about how they put the public sector values and codes of conduct into practice.
Finally, and in keeping with another specific legislative obligation, the Commission maintained the lobbyist register and undertook annual confirmation of more than 200 lobbyists and government affairs directors.
Lead work across public sector organisations and other integrity agencies to identify and prevent integrity risks
The Commission published an integrity framework that identifies what public sector agencies need to focus on to drive an integrity culture, captures the full range of integrity-related obligations in a central place and guides our legislated compliance and monitoring functions.
The Commission undertook a round of compliance monitoring with departments focusing on policies, processes and frameworks (one of the domains under the integrity framework).
Advocate for reforms to support a professional, impartial, apolitical public sector
The Commission supported the Victorian Secretaries’ Board (VSB) to develop its 2023 Integrity Statement. This Statement affirms VSB’s commitment to support a robust culture of integrity, including through the provision of full, frank, fearless and impartial advice, and sets out expectations of the sector and commitments by the Commission and the other VSB members.
The Commissioner regularly spoke at internal and external events where she advocated in favour of the leadership practices which support a professional, impartial and apolitical public sector. In particular, she emphasised at each opportunity the importance of creating cultures where people feel safe to speak up about integrity concerns. Drawing on the data from the People matter survey, she highlighted linkages between high engagement scores, and high perceptions of integrity in agencies, pointing to ways in which engagement and integrity scores could be improved.