This chapter has shown the large field of opportunity that exists for the development of more effective internal witness and whistleblower support programs, in public sector agencies in the jurisdictions studied.

The first part of the chapter showed that organised systems for supporting and protecting internal witnesses are in relative infancy. Only 54 per cent of all agencies surveyed had relevant procedures and only 11 per cent of all agencies surveyed had a formal internal witness support system. Moreover, even in the case study agencies, only a very small proportion of public interest whistleblowers—perhaps 1.3 per cent, or 6.5 per cent of all whistleblowers treated badly by management or colleagues—are estimated as having ever come into contact with those systems. The reasons for this low take-up of organised support services can include:

The second part of the chapter documented the sources of support experienced by public interest whistleblowers and the types of strategies or methods used. Not surprisingly, given the first results, the main sources of support that currently prevent more whistleblowers from suffering are not organised support programs, but informal social and professional networks, including family, friends, colleagues, union officials and supervisors. These analyses also revealed that case-handlers and managers—while not excessively optimistic about their own success—nevertheless continue to overestimate the extent to which organised or official sources of support are helping prevent worse outcomes. This creates a high risk that support will fail in any of the many circumstances in which the dual role of direct supervisors and line managers, described in Chapter 7, can turn from positive to negative. There are also signs that strategies can be somewhat reactive and attuned to bolstering the coping skills of whistleblowers in order to help them ‘tough out’ difficult situations, rather than to management intervention against sources of conflict.

The third part of the chapter examined the measures taken to assess the risks of reprisal and other major problems and to respond to those threats. These results provided like evidence that agency systems are currently largely reactive. In the majority of agencies, there is little focus on thorough assessment of cases for the risks of what might go wrong, as opposed to providing support in the hope that nothing will.

Finally, the analyses show that when reprisal risks are realised, agency case-handlers and managers do not see themselves as very well equipped or well placed to deal with them. Their evidence confirms indications from Chapter 5 that, generally, allegations that whistleblowers have suffered reprisals or other management lapses are not currently handled well. The most common reasons why such allegations are only rarely substantiated are not that reprisals do not occur, but because of a range of difficulties in investigation, especially relating to the fact that most reprisals involve management reprisals and institutional reactions, not acts for which individuals can be held culpable to a criminal standard of proof.

This somewhat negative overall picture does not detract from the reality that in many agencies considerable efforts are taking place to develop more effective strategies of internal witness support. Nor does it suggest these efforts are not achieving success. Rather, it highlights the extent of the challenges faced by agencies and governments if such systems are to be properly developed and made to work. The second report from this project will examine in more detail the strategies and resources currently being used by many agencies to support and manage internal witnesses, with a view to better understanding current best practice. The analysis here has highlighted the importance of this approach, by demonstrating that many agencies are yet to even scratch the surface in this effort.

Overall, the results also suggest there are ready gains to be made by more public sector agencies in reducing the proportion of public interest whistleblowers who complain of mistreatment and in improving the reporting climate in organisations by developing more sophisticated support strategies. The results also suggest, however, that a new level of commitment is needed for this to occur.

The research now available confirms that the potential catchment of employees for which such strategies need to work is much larger and more diffuse through most organisations than previously believed. In addition to simply expanding the scale and scope of support programs in resource terms, there is a clear need for more effective management information systems, to support a new relationship between internal coordination points for investigations and support, and supervisors and line managers, who currently receive most disclosures and are the most crucial players in determining whether an internal witness will receive support or suffer reprisals.

Similarly, the evidence suggests that some key developments in internal witness support are likely to hinge on regulatory and legislative reform. The low take-up of formal systems appears to be related to either restrictive statutory definitions of public interest disclosures, misapplication of those definitions or inadequate requirements for agencies to recognise, monitor and track disclosures. The patchy state of agency procedures and systems suggests a need for greater statutory guidance on agencies’ employee support obligations and mechanisms for more effective external policy support and oversight. More effective handling of individual cases appears to rely on a new, differentiated relationship between agencies and integrity agencies, to lift the burden on the former by enabling the latter to provide more timely and useful assistance in difficult cases. These issues are further explored in the next two chapters.

Consistent with the aim of enabling more whistleblowers to accept an ‘instrumental role’ in the progress, support strategies need to be more proactive, involve more organised approaches to risk assessment and develop a new range of options for active intervention in the management of whistleblowing cases. Currently, it is likely because a large number of whistleblowing cases are easy to manage, or largely ‘self-managing’, that they do not lead to worse outcomes. By learning to supplement current support strategies with additional options for intervention, there is good reason to believe that agencies with higher proportions of problem cases can better encourage reporting and achieve greater workplace harmony. The feasibility of these objectives is explored further in the next chapter, in which further analysis shows that, statistically, those taking more effort to develop stronger whistleblowing procedures are indeed achieving better outcomes.