This survey was conducted to help understand the nature and extent of risk, and perceptions of integrity and corruption in the Australian public sector. 

The results will be used to assess corruption risks and identify potential vulnerabilities and issues, and identify topics or themes that can inform corruption prevention and education initiatives. Heads of participating agencies will be provided with individual, de-identified reports which can be used to assess risks and opportunities in their own agencies.

Survey results are grouped into three high-level factors:

• Organisational controls: employees’ assessment of their agency’s overall integrity, its ability to detect and prevent corruption, and the extent to which the agency’s culture provides opportunities for corruption to occur. 
• Employee comprehension: employees’ ability to identify corruption (measured by both their confidence in doing so, and their responses to hypothetical scenarios). 
• Reporting likelihood: this measure of likelihood is comprised of employees’ willingness to report corruption and the extent to which they know (or can readily find out) how to do so.

Key findings

• Employees largely had faith in the integrity of their agency (79%).
• Employees had faith in the strength of the agency’s anti-corruption controls (67%).
• Almost all employees (96%) were confident they could identify corruption within their area of responsibility.
• Most employees indicated willingness to report corruption if they had direct access to specific details (88%) but were less likely to if they were merely told about specific details (69%), had a suspicion but no details (45%), or learned through hearsay, but with no details (34%).
• Most employees believed they knew or could readily find out how to report corruption either internally (83%) or to the Commission (72%).
• Across different agency sizes, the most positive results were recorded among ‘micro’ and ‘extra small’ agencies (those with 100 or fewer staff), particularly with regards to organisational integrity and anti-corruption controls.
• 64% of respondents considered that their colleagues would be supportive of those who reported corrupt conduct, indicating a pro-reporting culture.
• 15% of respondents said they have specific knowledge of corrupt conduct in their agency; 24% of those have witnessed four or more separate incidents of corrupt conduct.
• Nepotism, its close relative ‘cronyism’, and fraud are the most witnessed corrupt behaviours.
• A lack of evidence and fear of reprisals were the main barriers to reporting corrupt conduct.