Ethics Management in Public Organisations and the Role of Audit

In 2010 the Netherlands Court of Audit, the country’s supreme audit institution, submitted a report to Parliament, concerning the state of integrity management in central government in 2009. This noteworthy involvement of a public audit institution in assessing integrity/ethics management of public organisations is an inspiring experience. But it deserves to be evaluated from relevance, capability and governance angles before this policy is adopted by other countries like India. To avoid the evaluation of intangible values of ethics and integrity becoming another ‘ritual of verification’, the kinds of institutions and techniques required need careful examination, together with the administrative, social and economic costs involved. Comparative assessment of national integrity system and corruption-level in the Netherlands and India is done to find feasibility of transfer of policy. This paper draws on interviews and documentation from the Netherlands, and comparative work from India. Design and evaluation in this field face a series of difficulties. Studies in ethics/integrity management in the public sector suffer from different definitions or interpretations of the basic terms, in both academia and professional practice. The techniques used for measuring ethics/integrity of public organizations primarily concern whether certain formal procedures are in place. Thanks to NPM theories, managerial values are the main basis of assessment, instead of the administrative values of public organisations. Service aspects of public organisation remain unevaluated. Further, ethics/integrity of public organisations has to be seen from both individual and organisational points of view. The conflicts arising out of different values of individual and organisation as well as values in different strata of public officials remain unanswered. Impact of the external environment on values of the public organisation and individuals needs also to be addressed. Usage of perception surveys for assessing integrity management in public organisations is insufficient unless it includes perceptions of both citizens and public officials. Though the policy is inspiring, it has yet to achieve maturity before it is proposed to be adopted in India.