Page 17 - Service Delivery Review

2022 Public Service Ethics Survey

Key findings
The 2022 Public Sector Ethics Survey give a great deal of data about the state of ethics in the Public Sector.
However, the challenge is to read the patterns in the data and extract the key messages that will assist most in
improving the state of ethics in the Public Sector.

§ Regarding the ethical culture indicators - more than half of the respondents indicated concern around an
unsupportive ethical culture, especially what they thought to be a pervasive culture of fear in the Public
Sector.

§ Considering the above culture, it was unsurprising that several indicators show counterproductive work
behaviours that include abuse of time, being at work but not working, and abusing resources for personal
matters. While the extent of these behaviours is cause for concern, they likely stem from the hiring and
management practices that do not place sufficient value on professionalism.

§ In terms of ethics management interventions, the results indicated relatively high levels of awareness of
the Code of Ethics and policies regulating gifts and conflicts of interest, despite the less-than-ideal inter-
ventions on culture change and ethic training.

§ However, when the 2016 Public Service Regulations introduced ethics officers into the Public Sector,
awareness of ethics officers was considerably increased in subsequent years, as indicated in the 2022
survey at 43%.

SERVICE DELIVERY REVIEW | Volume 15 • No. 2 of 2022/2023 17