The tone at the top matters. Leaders are increasingly expected to lead by example, inspiring employees to live up to expected behaviours and exhibiting the highest ethical standards. Leaders can also actively promote an integrity culture by giving employees the tools and confidence to make ethical choices, encouraging them to seek advice, to voice their opinions and by providing them a safe space to freely discuss integrity concerns and to raise errors and problems before they become damaging to the organisation.
This report examines key issues around integrity leadership in Brazil’s federal public administration, building on a survey of 5 889 senior public officials from 104 federal entities. It proposes a concrete strategy for the Office of the Comptroller General (CGU), which leads integrity policies at the federal level in Brazil, to actively contribute to changing leaders’ behaviour.
This report, inspired and informed by insights from behavioural sciences, complements previous OECD collaboration with the CGU in promoting public integrity, including the reports on Strengthening Public Integrity in Brazil: Mainstreaming Integrity Policies in the Federal Executive Branch (2021) and on Modernising Integrity Risk Assessments in Brazil: Towards a Behavioural-sensitive and Data-driven Approach (2022).
This report contributes to OECD work to help countries effectively implement the OECD Recommendation on Public Integrity and in Applying Behavioural Insights for Public Integrity. The report was reviewed by the OECD Working Party of Senior Public Integrity Officials (SPIO) on 18 September 2023. It was approved by the Public Governance Committee on 16 November 2023 and prepared for publication by the Secretariat.