Public interest disclosures news

February 10, 2021

Dear Colleague,

The report for the period July – December 2020 is due on 14 February 2021

Welcome to Issue 43 of our PID e-newsletter, our first for 2021.

In this edition, we’ve included important information about:

The upcoming deadline for the PID reporting period and where to seek further information.
Our PID Oversight Annual Report 2019-20 and its discussion on previous audits and future audit plans.
Details of how to book for our PID management and awareness training sessions in March 2021.
Independent Broad-based Anti- Corruption Commission (IBAC) podcast.

As always, we encourage you to access the information on our website, or if you have any questions, please get in touch with the PID team through pid@ombo.nsw.gov.au.

Remember to update us if your agency changes who is responsible for PID management!

Feel free to forward this edition of PID e-news to interested colleagues – they can subscribe through the link.

Kind regards
PID Unit

Reporting – ensuring your authority is compliant with PID Act obligations

Under section 6CA of the Public Interest Disclosures Act 1994, public authorities are required to provide our office with statistical information every six months about their handling of PIDs.

The report for the period July – December 2020 is due on 14 February 2021

All Disclosures Coordinators should ensure the report is submitted on time. Disclosures Coordinators should also ensure that any outstanding reports for previous reporting periods are submitted as soon as possible. The PID online reporting tool allows you to check whether your authority has outstanding reports, or please contact us to discuss.

Even if your authority has not received any PIDs in the reporting period, a report should still be submitted advising this, and outlining the action you have taken to raise awareness about PIDs with your staff.

For more information, you can access:

PID Oversight Annual Report 2019-20 and audits

In the December edition of PID e-News we announced the release of the PID Oversight Annual Report 2019-20. In Part 5 of this report, we highlighted two audits we conducted in 2019-20:

An audit which looked at the extent to which 14 previously audited public authorities had implemented our recommendations (the PID Implementation Audit).
An audit which looked at the publication of PID policies on select public authority websites, and the extent to which those public authorities were adopting our guidance (the PID Policy Visibility Audit).

The PID Implementation Audit focused on 14 audits we conducted between June 2014 to July 2017. Overall, our implementation audit found that public authorities accepted the majority (93%) of our recommendations, and that most audited public authorities had taken steps to implement our recommendations.

The PID Policy Visibility Audit reviewed the visibility of PID policies on the websites of local government entities and universities. In this audit, we sought to understand:

whether these public authorities have published PID policies on their websites
whether information about PIDs is easily accessible on their websites, and
to what extent these public authorities are incorporating our guidance when developing their PID policies.

We found that the PID policies of the majority (75.6%) of local government entities were published on their websites. However, the policies were often difficult to locate. This included difficulty navigating to locations, keyword search terms that did not locate the policy, and inconsistencies in PID policy naming conventions. All 10 universities have published a PID policy on their website. In general, university PID policies were able to be located easily through keyword search terms, though they required additional clicks to locate them. Universities are also more likely to include information on reporting wrongdoing outside of their PID policy. The majority of LALCs (81.7%) do not have an external website at all. Of the remaining 19 LALCs that have a website, only two had a published PID policy. Our intention is to work more closely with LALCs over the next year to assist these authorities in connection with their responsibilities under the PID Act.

A review of the content of PID policies that were available on websites identified a number of key elements of the PID scheme that were not consistently included in published policies. We encourage you to review the report’s findings against your agency’s PID policy.

Our office’s strategic plan prioritises a review of our PID audit function. In an environment highly constrained by limited resources, we recognise the importance of strategic focus in where and how we conduct our audits. In addition to refreshing our audit approach, our aim is to seek further input from stakeholders about audit priorities, and how our audit program can add most value to the PID system in NSW.

PID training sessions

In March 2021, we will be offering PID training:

six PID management training sessions which discuss strategies for managing parties involved in the disclosures and outlines the role of the NSW Ombudsman. This overview session provides staff with information about the why, what, how and who of PID, explaining the process of making a PID and discussing specific aspects of an agency’s internal reporting policy.
two PID general awareness information sessions which provide an overview of the obligations of NSW public authorities under the PID Act 1994. It covers the why, what, how and who of public interest disclosures as well as the responsibilities of the nominated officers and agency executives.

The dates for the training sessions are below:

Day / Date and time / Session

Tuesday 2 March 2021 — 9.30am to 12pm — PID Management
Thursday 4 March 2021 — 9.30am to 12pm — PID Management
Tuesday 9 March 2021 — 9.30am to 12pm — PID Management
Thursday 11 March 2021 — 10am to 11am — PID Awareness
Thursday 11 March 2021 — 2pm to 3pm — PID Awareness
Tuesday 16 March 2021 — 9.30am to 12pm — PID Management
Thursday 18 March 2021 — 9.30am to 12pm — PID Management
Tuesday 23 March 2021 — 9.30am to 12pm — PID Management
Thursday 25 March 2021 — 10am to 11am — PID Awareness
Thursday 25 March 2021 — 2pm to 3pm — PID Awareness

To register for a session, please visit here. For further information, please contact training@ombo.nsw.gov.au.

IBAC podcast

IBAC is Victoria's agency responsible for preventing and exposing public sector corruption and police misconduct. Their jurisdiction covers state and local government, police, parliament and the judiciary.