Improving ethical conduct at municipalities
The Gauteng Municipal Integrity Project is intensifying efforts to promote ethical conduct by municipalities and curb corruption
The Gauteng Provincial Government is intensifying efforts to promote ethical conduct by municipalities, and in so doing, curb corruption.
Through the partnership with the Ethics Institute, the Premier’s Office and the Provincial Department of Cooperative Government and Traditional Affairs (GoGTA), nine local and metropolitan municipalities are part of the Gauteng Municipal Integrity Project.
The five-year project is funded by the Siemens Integrity Initiative and its purpose is to strengthen the integrity management capacity of municipalities.
Through the project, the Ethics Institute aims to build the internal capacity of municipalities to sustainably and independently govern their organisational ethics.
Memoranda of understanding have been signed by the institute and each of the nine local municipalities.
Since the launch of the Gauteng Municipal Integrity Project three years ago, more than 750 people have been trained including 40 ethics officers, 18 ethics trainers, 320 councillors and 350 officials.
The Ethics Risk Assessments and
Ethics Management Maturity Assessments have been finalised in most municipalities.
The remaining two years of the project will involve the review of ethics and anti-corruption strategies and policies, and engaging the relevant committee structures that will provide oversight of organisational integrity as required by the Local Government Anti-Corruption Strategy.
Manager for Organisational Eth-
ics at the Ethics Institute, Kris Dobie, said the role of the institute is to help improve ethics management practices at municipalities and combat corruption.
Developing capacity
Through the training that it provides, the institute wants to develop capacity in municipalities by empowering councillors, ethics officers and champions by mentoring them in terms of instilling ethical values so that they can continue doing the work independently after the partnership has ended.
“We are also engaging with ethics committees and ethics champions, to which we invite municipal managers and chairpersons of oversight committees to have the leadership conversation around ethics management. We are training ethics trainers in municipalities so that they can go and train their staff members,” said Dobie.
“We are also helping them to conduct an ethics risk assessment and a maturity assessment, to check if their ethics management and anti-corruption systems are in place, and to develop strategies and relevant policies for them,” he added.
He said a strong focus is on the internalisation of ethics rather than just the rules because he believes in a values-based approach rather than rules-based approach.
“We want to help them set up government structures around ethics. There needs to be a committee that provides oversight. There needs to be someone to manage ethics,” Dobie said.
Building relationships
He said the institute is proud of the relationships that it has built with municipalities, with specific ethics champions and officers in municipalities.
According to Dobie, officials and the leadership in municipalities are committed to the project and people are taking up the challenge.
“It is not equal at all municipalities, there are municipalities that have more capacity and dedicated people who work than others, and some municipalities have had some political turmoil which does impact on the project. Political stability is very important for the project to work,” he said.
The council oversight of the ethics management project is the one area that still needs improvement, he said, adding that there needs to be a council committee that engages with the proactive side of ethics management in municipalities.
Dobie said there needs to be a concerted effort to promote an ethical culture in organisations, and councils need to have oversight committees to ask the right questions.
“Substantively, there needs to be an awareness amongst councillors about the impact that political instability has – councillors are not necessarily the driving force behind the instability but they are sometimes part of the process,” he said.
Sustainability of the project
Ultimately, the institute wants to ensure the sustainability of the Gauteng Municipal Integrity Project and ensure that government structures that specifically engage with ethics management and anti-corruption are in place.
“There is quite a lot in place already in certain municipalities. Some of the municipalities are doing really well in terms of anti-corruption and ethics management infrastructure but we are helping them to finetune it and probably take a more proactive approach than a reactive approach,” he added.
Dobie said the Gauteng Provincial Government was supportive of the project and the institute was happy to have partnered with Gauteng, which is one of the provinces that has the most matured integrity management focus.