ANZSOG helps NSW Public Service Commission create a pro-integrity public service culture

Issues such as Robodebt have focused attention on public sector integrity issues across all Australian jurisdictions. 

In New South Wales, the Office of the Public Service Commissioner is working on a range of initiatives to lift capability around ethics and integrity in NSW and has partnered with ANZSOG on an ongoing project to deliver custom workshops to senior public servants. 

Kieran Gregory, Principal Advisor Integrity and Ethics, Office of the NSW Public Service Commissioner, said that the partnership had been a success due to the combination of ANZSOG’s expertise and the NSW PSC’s knowledge of the local context and legislative framework.  

The NSW PSC released a new code of conduct for the New South Wales government in November 2024 and, while developing the code, realised there were opportunities to build ethics and integrity capabilities in the sector’s senior leadership. 

“The genesis of this project really was about on ensuring that senior leaders in the New South Wales government sector have the capabilities and the skills to build good ethical cultures in their organisations,” Mr Gregory said. 

“It’s about dealing with some of those more complex challenges and helping them to take the concepts and apply them effectively to make sure that we have a pro-integrity culture right across the New South Wales public service. 

“What we ultimately want to see is an environment where people are not making poor decisions because they didn’t know better. For example, because they didn’t fully understand the legislative framework they were operating under,” he said. 

The NSW OPSC worked in partnership with ANZSOG to design a five-hour workshop for Band 3 senior executives across the NSW public service. A series of workshops were delivered in 2024, led by integrity expert Michael Macaulay, Professor of Public Administration at the School of Government at Victoria University of Wellington. 

“Professor Macaulay brought really deep knowledge in the ethics space and has also facilitated and taught executives for an extended period of time,” Mr Gregory said. 

“We were able to work with him and ANZSOG in relation to that knowledge and that experience and think about how do we apply that to a New South Wales context. 

“The way that Michael facilitated the sessions was really discussion-oriented. He said ‘this isn’t just you listening to me, this is about us having a conversation and learning from each other as well’”.   

The workshops were based around real-world cases that added practical context to the theory and included key speakers who were able to share their experiences of integrity issues that had arisen in their work. 

“We were able to have really nuanced conversations about some of the complex ethical challenges that they’re likely to come across. Because as you move and grow your career, the kinds of issues that you’re likely to be encountering are increasingly complex, Mr Gregory said. 

“One pleasant surprise for us was the eagerness that participants had to discuss Robodebt, and get into the nuts and bolts of what happened and why, and reflect on whether environmental conditions in their agency were similar. It was a nice discovery that people were really, really eager to have these conversations.” 

Building pro-integrity cultures within organisations

The workshops focused on themes including the lines of accountability between ministers and public servants, integrity in the role of the public servant, and stewarding organisational cultures and systems to promote integrity. 

Mr Gregory said that senior leaders played a critical role in building integrity-focused cultures within their organisations, and if they were not hyper-focused on it, their people would not be hyper-focused on it.  

“The New South Wales government sector has an ethical framework for the sector, built on our core values of integrity, trust, accountability, and service. It’s really about making sure that we’re embedding those values in our decision making,” he said. 

“We want to make sure that our people feel confident speaking up, and that we not only are encouraging a speak-up culture, but we’re encouraging a listening-up culture as well. So when people are raising concerns our senior leaders know what they need to do in relation to them.” 

Building ethical and integrity capability is a complex and ongoing process, and the ANZSOG workshops are just one part of the NSW OPSC’s work in this area. 

“We’ve launched an ethics hub on our website, to provide a suite of resources that help people understand what it means to be a public servant. We are also developing a suite of resources to enable agencies to effectively assess their ‘integrity maturity’ and benchmark themselves. Additional resources will support agencies to address areas in need of development.” 

“In conjunction with the other key NSW integrity agencies we have also launched a community of practice for ethical behaviour that promotes a deeper understanding of what integrity looks like in the NSW public sector. Their events are focused on complex, current issues, for example the next one is on the ethical challenges linked to AI.” 

Ongoing work with ANZSOG in 2025

ANZSOG will again partner with the NSW OPSC in 2025 to deliver another series of workshops, this time for both Band 2 and Band 3 executives. 

“The feedback for the program in its first iteration was really overwhelmingly positive, and it’s exciting to be able to run it again and expand its reach,” Mr Gregory said. 

“People appreciated taking the time to step away from the day-to-day, you know, minutiae of work and being able to reflect on what are really impactful, really important things. Because when this stuff goes off the rails, it tends to go off the rails in a big way.  

“People also really valued the networking opportunity and being able to connect with people from other agencies who are potentially experiencing similar challenges. It gives them contact with people they can bounce issues off, and who can provide a view that’s removed from the pressures of your organisation.” 

The NSW OPSC and ANZSOG have used feedback from the 2024 sessions to refine the 2025 iteration and will deliver a shorter workshop with a greater emphasis on pre-reading.  

Mr Gregory said that the process of working with ANZSOG had been rewarding. 

“In terms of the collaborative process between us and ANZSOG, we got to a really good place with the quality of the work and the quality of the program, and all the logistics and facilitation was really easy as well. 

“In a budget constrained environment agencies need to be really considerate about how they’re expending money. It’s important to choose the right provider with the right expertise who is able to bring that genuine value add. And that’s what’s happened with this partnership with ANZSOG.” 

ANZSOG’s Custom Solutions allow us to use our deep networks of academics and practitioners to create programs to meet the one-off or ongoing capability development needs of public sector organisations. 

Our offerings include: 

• Compact seminars and masterclasses focused on specific ideas, concepts and research.
• Intensive workshops with expert facilitators and learning among trusted peers.
• Immersive place-based experiences that connect participants to the communities their work impacts.
• Multi-module leadership programs that combine diagnostic assessments, workshops, coaching and work-based projects.
• Individual and team coaching to strengthen leadership and performance.

For more information contact ANZSOG: engage@anzsog.edu.au.