Ethics Violations Increase in All Levels of U.S. Government: Survey
Feb 4th, 2008 • Posted in: NewsIn related news, a study says corruption still is endemic worldwide despite reforms
WASHINGTON
Surveys released last week say that ethical breaches are becoming more common in the U.S. government and that corruption continues to choke governments worldwide despite some hopeful reforms.
A study from the Ethics Resource Center found that nearly 60 percent of government employees in the United States — across a spectrum of federal, state, and local agencies — witnessed workplace violations of ethics standards or laws within the last year, the Washington Post reports.
Most of the breaches were reported at the local level, according to the Associated Press. Sixty-three percent of local government employees said they had observed at least one type of ethics transgression, ranging from abusive behavior by a supervisor to bribery. For state employees, the figure was 57 percent; for federal employees, 52 percent.
While the rate of reporting incidents has increased over the past several years, the report’s authors warn that whistle-blowing reports were generally made to lower-level managers, meaning that high-level executives may not be aware of the extent of misconduct in their agencies, according to the trade journal Government Executive.
A separate study conducted by the watchdog group Global Integrity classifies more than half of the examined countries as “weak” or “very weak” when fighting corruption, according to a summary from Voice of America.
A troubling finding: While many countries recently have codified tough anticorruption laws and regulation, enforcement is often weak or nonexistent.
Global Integrity director Nathaniel Heller points to Pakistan as an example. “You have a huge gap between theoretical laws on the books for anticorruption and their enforcement,” he said, according to the VOA report.
“In many developing countries you will have outstanding laws, but the problem in most, and in a place like Pakistan, is that you have very little implementation and enforcement. And that really, ultimately, goes back to political will.”
Sources: Washington Post, Feb. 1 — Government Executive, Feb. 1 — Voice of America, Feb. 1 — AP, Jan. 30.
For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Jan. 22 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 14 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 31, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 13, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 5, 2007 — Text of Ethics Resource Center report, Jan. 29 — Text of Global Integrity Report, undated.
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