Integrity

The Australian Public Service is working hard to deeply embed and sustain integrity at all levels.

Integrity starts with supporting individuals to understand and fulfil their important responsibilities as APS officers under the Public Service Act 1999, including adhering to the APS Values and Code of Conduct. For individuals, this is an ongoing commitment, from integrity training when starting in the APS to implementation in the daily conduct of their work.

Senior Executive Service leaders must lead by example. When leaders model the right behaviours, it creates a pro-integrity culture where staff can speak up with questions or concerns. This promotes better decision-making and delivery and builds broader trust in government.

APS agencies are assessing and improving their integrity systems using the Commonwealth Integrity Maturity Framework and integrity metric resources. Agencies that understand their integrity risks and actively monitor their performance are better positioned to create a pro-integrity culture and mitigate integrity vulnerabilities.

The Capability Reinvestment Fund 2024–25 is supporting the development of a prototype integrity data framework to better measure and monitor integrity data and analyse the effectiveness of integrity systems.

Louder Than Words: An APS Integrity Action Plan, the final report of the APS Integrity Taskforce, was endorsed by the Secretaries Board and published on 17 November 2023. It made 15 recommendations across the areas of culture, systems and accountability. Implementation is in progress across the APS.

An inquiry by Independent Reviewers, supported by the Centralised Code of Conduct Inquiry Taskforce, found that 12 current and former APS agency heads and employees breached the APS Code of Conduct on 97 occasions in matters associated with the Robodebt Scheme. The Robodebt Scheme was a failure of government in both policy design and implementation. The APS acknowledges its role, takes responsibility for its actions, and is learning from these failures.

An Integrity Strategy for the Commonwealth Public Sector is being developed to enhance coordination and information-sharing across government agencies. It will provide the public with greater insights into the work underway to strengthen integrity in the Commonwealth public sector.

The new Commonwealth Fraud and Corruption Control Framework came into effect on 1 July 2024. It supports a more proactive and targeted approach to minimising the serious harms that fraud and corruption cause for the community and the public sector.

A new Commonwealth Supplier Code of Conduct came into effect on 1 July 2024. It strengthens the Australian Government’s ability to identify, and respond to, supplier misconduct.

The National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) started operations on 1 July 2023. This independent agency detects, investigates and reports on serious or systemic corrupt conduct among public officials. The NACC educates the APS and the public about corruption risks and prevention.

Legislation to establish the Administrative Review Tribunal was passed on 28 May 2024 and will start on 14 October 2024. It provides the public with an avenue to seek review of government decisions on important matters that affect them, including social security, migration and taxation decisions