Building a Pro-Integrity Culture in the Public Sector: A Review of Promising Practices

A pro-integrity culture goes beyond policing corruption to build the capabilities and practices of public sector leaders and staff, integrating the protection and enhancement of the public interest into their everyday work. ANZSOG has partnered with the Victorian Public Sector Commission to sponsor research by experts at the University of Sydney into practical changes the public sector can make to foster a pro-integrity culture.

Deploying an innovative action research methodology, the research team is working with communities of practice in 4 Victorian government agencies to trial new practices and track their effects on staff behaviours. To help motivate the action research projects in each of the agencies, the researchers developed a database of promising practices that have been trialled and documented in other Australian and international public sector agencies. This database was shared with communities of practice to assist them in their identification of practices to trial.

This analysis is shared here for the benefit of practitioners across the sector, with the caveat that the selection of practices featured in this report aims at presenting communities of practice with options, rather than a comprehensive accounting of all pro-integrity measures being implemented across the public sectors of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Indeed, the review process underlined the need for more systematic documentation of the practical actions that are being trialled and implemented for the purposes of fostering pro-integrity cultures, so that promising practices can be rendered more visible to practitioners.

The review provides a framework for categorising the variety of practical actions that are being taken to change public sector practices. This framework, as well as the concrete examples of each category of practice, can assist the sector to identify different approaches for the development of fit-for-purpose interventions.

TITLE: Building a pro-integrity culture in the public sector

AUTHORS: Dr Assel Mussagulova, Prof. Susan Goodwin, Alicia Wang Sin

SERIES: ANZSOG Research Insights

DATE: 25 June 2025

PUBLISHER: Australia and New Zealand School of Government

ISSN: 2653-7281