Introducing NISA

Our ground-breaking joint project in the area of public and private sector integrity with the Key Centre for Law, Ethics, Justice and Governance at Griffith University (the Key Centre) started in late 1999.

For the purposes of this task, integrity in public office is defined as: The unifying principle .... [that] requires that, ultimately, policy judgments, the service of citizens, decisions, and all operations of public agents (acting as public agents) are to be justified in terms of publicly stated values derived from the intrinsic purpose of liberal democratic government. That purpose is to exercise public trust by serving the public interest. Integrity systems involve a range of institutions, laws, procedures, practices and attitudes that encourage and support integrity and discourage and punish a lack of integrity among public servants or employees in a private sector organisation and those who may wish to corrupt such integrity systems.

Intended progressively to map and assess the effectiveness of Australia's National Integrity Systems at Commonwealth, state and territory level and also in the business sector, the Australia-wide National Integrity Systems Audit (NISA) focussed first on Queensland.

The Key Centre completed a pilot survey of integrity in the Queensland Public Sector Queensland Integrity Systems Assessment (QNISA) and the report is has been published both on the internet and in hard copy.

A project to map and assess the effectiveness of integrity systems in the business sector Business Integrity Systems Assessment (BISA) was completed in November 2001. The research was conducted by RMIT School of Management with the active collaboration and financial backing of a number of TI corporate members.

The third stage of NISA is the Commonwealth National Integrity Systems Assessment(CNISA). This research has been conducted by the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE), a joint institute of Charles Sturt University and University of Melbourne based in Canberra, commencing in May 2001. The report and the questionnaire used in the study were released in October 2004.

The Commonwealth study is needed to enable a composite picture to be developed, taking account of the federal, state and business sectors. The sectoral studies will be supplemented by comparative cross-jurisdictional studies across Australia on important issues such as criminal laws on bribery, registers of interests and freedom of information. As a composite picture emerges and as trends and comparisons can be made, the project is expected to generate increasingly useful findings for policy-makers and others both in Australia and overseas.

NISA is attracting attention around the world. The TI Secretariat is enthusiastic about the Australian reports and is keen to use the lessons it contains to help in other jurisdictions, both developed and developing. TI also wants to include NISA in the TI 'Tool Kit' of innovative methodologies for curbing corruption and enhancing transparency, accountability and integrity.

We intend to look at the use of indicators to compare integrity systems in different jurisdictions. This will build on indicators developed by TI which have been trialled in 20 developing countries by Liverpool University.

The key overall objective of NISA is to develop a much better understanding of the integrity systems across Australia, their respective strengths and weaknesses and their interactions. Benchmarks will be identified to monitor changes and best practice, as well as problems. These will be shared internationally, both within the TI movement and at international conferences.