Whistleblowing is when someone working in or with the civil service raises a concern about wrongdoing or malpractice in the workplace that has a public interest aspect to it. It serves to protect and reassure the workforce, maintain a healthy working culture, helps safeguard the effective delivery of public services and ensure value for money.
We are producing two outputs.
The first output will be an investigation providing an overview of the whistleblowing landscape. It will:
- set out what whistleblowing is, why it’s important to get right, and the roles and responsibilities for whistleblowing across government
- summarise changes made to whistleblowing arrangements and central government oversight
- set out what publicly available, centrally-held or centrally-mandated information suggests about whistleblowing in the civil service
Our second output will publish shortly after the investigation and will be a practical guide on whistleblowing that practitioners can apply. It will provide insight on different organisations’ experience in managing whistleblowing focusing on how to:
- raise awareness of whistleblowing and encourage people to raise concerns
- help whistleblowers have a positive experience of raising a concern
- use whistleblowing to support organisational learning and improvement
NAO Team
Director: Kate Caulkin
Audit Manager: Alec Steel