There are many laws that could potentially be useful to ethics officers. These include the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act (PAJA), the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA), the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA), and the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA).
We will, however, not deal with all of these. For our purposes, the following two laws stand out:
This law sets out the crime of corruption. It also sets out organisations’ responsibilities in preventing corruption and dealing with it.
You can watch this video from the National School of Government which gives an overview of the Act.
One of the duties of an ethics officer might include the setting up of the hotline and whistleblowing policy of their organisation.
To do this correctly you would need to know the Protected Disclosures Act.
Extract from the 2000 Protected Disclosures Act, section 6
(2) (a) Every employer must-
(i) authorise appropriate internal procedures for receiving and dealing with information about improprieties; and
(ii) take reasonable steps to bring the internal procedures to the attention of every employee and worker.
(b) Any employee or worker who, in accordance with a procedure authorised by his or her employer, makes a disclosure to a person other than his or her employer, is deemed, for the purposes of this Act, to be making the disclosure to his or her employer.
You can watch this video from the National School of Government which gives an overview of the Act:
The Protected Disclosures Act (PDA) sets out designated disclosure avenues, such as the Public Protector and the Auditor-General (among many). It is important to note that the PDA Regulations, 2018, add significantly more designated disclosure avenues. Among these is the Public Administration Ethics, Integrity and Disciplinary Technical Assistance Unit.
Strategic Work
Strategic work is done once in 3 years. This work integrates ethics into the organisation’s long-term vision, governance systems, decision making, and stakeholder engagement.
Institutionalisation
Everyday Work
The institutionalisation of ethics is the core role of the ethics officer or the everyday work. The focus of institutionalisation is on how to make ethics real in the organisation so that it becomes part of the organisational culture.
INSTITUTIONALISATION
Making Ethics RealIn The Organisation.
The work of the ethics officer is to manage the ethics programme of the organisation.
