10. Evaluating agency responses: the comprehensiveness and impact of whistleblowing procedures

What does the empirical evidence about whistleblowing in Australian public sector agencies, described in Part 1 of this book, say about the quality of their systems and procedures? So far in this part, analysis has focused on the attitudes and knowledge of managers, internal investigation systems and systems for protecting and managing whistleblowers (Chapters 7, 8 and 9). This chapter present an overall picture of how the reporting of wrongdoing is formally dealt with from an organisational perspective, examining and comparing the totality of agencies’ procedures using the empirical evidence of key whistleblowing outcomes in the agencies studied.

As is already clear, many public sector organisations have accepted the challenge of encouraging staff to disclose perceived wrongdoing and have committed themselves to protecting staff from reprisals—but some have not, and most are finding at least some parts of the challenge to be substantial. From the outset, it is worth noting the three broad (and overlapping) themes, encountered by the researchers to date, which appear to drive organisational approaches to the management of whistleblowing. These themes demonstrate that the same challenges can be viewed differently by different managers and can help explain differences in agency approaches.

The first theme is compliance: many senior managers are aware that they are required to establish procedures and implement policies for the purpose of complying with applicable legislation, such as ‘public interest disclosure’ or ‘whistleblower protection’ legislation. Chapter 7 highlighted, however, that when it comes to basic management knowledge of statutory obligations and therefore their effective implementation, challenges begin to arise.

The second theme is utilitarian: many senior managers in organisations recognise that good governance requires that wrongdoing be identified and dealt with. A second dimension of this response is that managers might also recognise that when reporting wrongdoing results in individual staff members suffering mistreatment or reprisals, the potentially devastating effects on individuals, along with impacts on the productivity of others, can put large resource burdens on the organisation.

Finally, senior managers in organisations often also take an ethical stance, viewing reporting of wrongdoing as a fundamental part of maintaining the integrity of the organisation. Those managers will work to establish whistleblowing systems and procedures for the reason that these promote integrity within the organisation as a whole, maintain public integrity more generally and perhaps also provide for fairer outcomes for individuals through the type of organisational justice described in Chapter 3.

This chapter analyses the contents and apparent effectiveness of agency procedures, in their legislative and jurisdictional context, in light of these three themes. The first part of the chapter looks for evidence from the employee survey of whether the existence of whistleblowing legislation is associated with desired outcomes from whistleblowing, at any agency level. These analyses provide some measure of the impacts when agencies rely simply on the existence of legislation to provide guidance to their staff about responses to whistleblowing or limit their approach to minimal compliance. The existence of legislation is measured subjectively, in terms of the level of staff awareness and confidence in that legislation within individual agencies. The outcomes measured are the reporting and inaction rates in those agencies (the proportion of employees who observe wrongdoing but do and do not report it) and the proportion of reporters who complain of mistreatment.

The results show that in those agencies in which more staff are aware of and confident about whistleblowing legislation, there are more positive attitudes to whistleblowing, higher whistleblowing ‘propensity’ on the part of staff, higher trust in the anticipated management response to whistleblowing and a higher likelihood that serious wrongdoing will be exposed or ‘flushed out’ (lower inaction rates). While these results suggest that even a ‘mere compliance’ approach can have positive effects, they also reveal some of its limitations. Despite these outcomes, the same agencies did not record any lower rates of mistreatment of reporters than other agencies. This suggests that while increased awareness of legislation encourages staff to report and to trust their management, more is needed for agencies to meet these raised expectations.

The second part of the chapter examines the comprehensiveness of procedures across the 175 agencies that provided written procedures to the study and the 102 of these agencies that also participated in the employee survey. These procedures provide the main framework within which organisations deal with, and respond to, reports of wrongdoing, at a level below or even irrespective of the framework provided by the legislation. The comprehensiveness of the procedures is assessed against the basic requirements of the relevant Australian Standard and also an extended set of requirements developed for the public sector by this project.

The results show that while some areas in current procedures have some strength, there are systemic weaknesses in all jurisdictions in how agencies currently formally respond to whistleblowing. Only five of the 175 agencies were rated as having procedures that would reasonably satisfy all the requirements set out in the current Australian Standard. The substantial variability in the comprehensiveness of procedures found across all jurisdictions, together with their patchiness and generally low comprehensiveness, confirm the need for the development of new best-practice or model procedures. Consistent with the results from Chapter 9, the analysis reveals that agencies’ formal procedures appear to be skewed towards encouraging reporting and setting in place the investigative responses to those reports, more than management of the welfare of those involved. The results also suggest a need for clearer statutory requirements and oversight of the quality of procedures. Even when agencies have moved beyond a mere compliance approach and have taken up a more utilitarian approach, this appears to remain limited in its focus.

The third part of the chapter examines the effectiveness of current procedures and establishes that more comprehensive procedures are indeed associated with a higher incidence of positive outcomes from whistleblowing. These results indicate that a more comprehensive approach is likely to deliver results for agencies—not only in terms of heightened support for whistleblowing and trust in management, but in substantive outcomes such as reporting rates and reduced rates of whistleblower mistreatment. The general weakness of most procedures for the protection of whistleblowers means that these outcomes cannot be traced directly to better whistleblower support programs. Nevertheless, the evidence suggests that more comprehensive approaches do yield better outcomes, providing significant encouragement for those agencies prepared to make an effort to develop better whistleblowing management systems.