The Dutch National Office for Promoting Ethics and Integrity in the Public Sector advises and supports public sector organisations in the development and implementation of ethics and integrity policy.

Integrity policy

Integrity is one of the most important aspects of good governance. Citizens depend on the public services and these can only be trusted if civil servants act ethically. This is an important subject which is receiving increasing attention. Integrity is seen as a precondition for the quality and proper functioning of the public sector.

The National Integrity Office

The Minister for the Interior and Kingdom Relations coordinates and promotes integrity for the public sector in the Netherlands. In this role, the Minister has established the National Integrity Office. The Office was set up to help government organisations improve their integrity policies. Due to recommendations in the 2003 VN treaty on fighting corruption, it was decided to situate the National Integrity Office outside the Ministry, within the CAOP, which is the Netherlands' largest knowledge and service centre for the labour market and labour relations within the public domain. This guarantees the independence of the National Integrity Office and ensures it can carry out its functions with the necessary resources and autonomy.

Vision of integrity

The main aim of the Dutch National Integrity Office is to improve the learning skills of organisations so as to enable them to shape their own ethics and integrity policies. We use a broad definition of integrity since it involves much more than laws, regulations and procedures. Of equal importance, if not more, is to make provision for an open culture, to have model conduct among managerial staff and to strengthen the moral competence of civil servants and their managers by means of education and training. To attain this 'good' civil servants and ÔgoodÕ employers are needed. This means that the civil servant should deal carefully and responsibly with the powers, resources and information to which he/she has access for the benefit of the general good which he/she serves. A 'good' employer is responsible for adopting a good integrity policy and protecting civil servants by removing risks and temptations and teaching and encouraging them to make sound (moral) judgments.

Tasks of the National Integrity Office

To achieve its main aims the National Integrity Office fulfils three tasks. Its first task is the promotion and support of ethics and integrity policies. The various government sectors are supported in setting up and implementing ethics and integrity policy via workshops, conferences and free provision of useful information.

The second task is the collection, dissemination and exchange of knowledge. As a knowledge institution, the National Integrity Office strives to provide all governmental organisations with useful knowledge. The Office actively monitors national and international developments in the area of integrity, tracks national and international best practices, participates in research projects, carries out academic studies and issues publications.

The third and last task is the development of integrity instruments. The Office is constantly developing instruments that can be used to discuss, test or improve integrity within the organisation. The Office does not only (co)develop instruments and models but also promotes similar initiatives among third parties and participates if required.

Integrity infrastructure model

The National Integrity Office has developed the Integrity Infrastructure, since we often experience integrity policies as fragmented whereas they should actually form a coherent system. The model emphasises the integrated nature of integrity policy. To achieve such integration, attention should be paid to the different aspects of integrity. We have identified six aspects: role of top management, core values & standards, structures & processes, culture & personnel policy, incidents, and evaluation & reports.

The six areas of attention in the model represent a logical cycle; starting with the role of senior management, relevant core values and standards are mapped. These form the basis of structures and processes that make the organisation less vulnerable. In the next step, attention is given to personnel and the organisational culture. Unfortunately, incidents happen and every organisation has to be well prepared to handle them. In the final step, the integrity policy and its instruments are monitored and evaluated. In this way, a learning process is initiated which makes improvement possible.

Self Assessment INTegrity (SAINT)

The Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (The National Integrity Office: BIOS), the Integrity Office of the municipality of Amsterdam, and the Netherlands Court of Audit have jointly developed a new self-assessment instrument for integrity (SAINT). The National Integrity Office (BIOS) manages the instrument, which is intended for all public sector organisations in the Netherlands.
Read more about SAINT in the SAINT Factsheet (920 KB).

International activities

The Dutch National Integrity Office reaches out to countries that are in an earlier stage of developing an integrity policy, as we believe we can provide an extensive amount of useful information and tools needed to shape a coherent ethics and integrity policy. We are involved in an advisory project for the government of Bulgaria and we are working together with Poland and the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. We also participate in various international forums. One of our achievements is the development of the Catalogue of Promising Practices (1.1 MB) in which different countries present a succesful project in the field of integrity, anti-corruption or administrative measures.

T: 070 - 3765937 
E: info@integriteitoverheid.nl