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agency. Subsequently, she improperly accepted thousands of dollars worth of gifts and other inducements from a supplier, unnecessarily spending tens of thousands of dollars of public funds as a result.
9.The failure to adequately screen employees is due in part to an inaccurate and overly simplistic understanding of the provisions of the Information Privacy Act 2000. I have noted for example, a reluctance to contact previous employers to validate a candidate’s background, even where those employers are other public sector agencies. Likewise I have also identified a reluctance by some public sector managers to provide full and frank references due to these misunderstandings.
10.When consulted, the Victorian Privacy Commissioner agreed that there is often a misunderstanding of privacy laws and stated:
The Information Privacy Act does not prevent a public sector agency using or disclosing personal information about its former employees. Rather, the Information Privacy Act contains provisions that permit such disclosures in certain circumstances.
11.A tendency to use privacy laws as a shield to hide behind is an issue I have identified in investigations such as my 2011 investigation report
on agency failures to manage sex offenders1. In my view this tendency reflects a defensiveness on the part of some agencies who use privacy legislation to justify failures instead of having the public interest as their priority. This reflects poorly on the agencies concerned and has the effect of undermining privacy legislation.
Nepotism and conflicts of interest
12.My investigations identified continuing issues with conflict of interest and favouritism in recruitment and the engagement of contract or casual labour. Again case studies in this report detail instances where public officers directly or indirectly assisted family members or friends to obtain
employment within their agency. In particular, I substantiated a number of such allegations in relation to schools and tertiary education institutions.
13.In some instances I concluded that the failure to appropriately manage a conflict of interest was not simply due to a lack of knowledge, rather it reflected an intention to deceive. For example, my recent investigation of CenITex2 identified serious misconduct, where contractors engaged in practices that cost the State substantial sums of money and damaged CenITex’s reputation.
Recycling
14.The lack of rigour evident in some recruitment activities led to the ‘recycling’ of officers who had been suspected of engaging in improper conduct at one public sector agency subsequently being engaged by another agency.
1Victorian Ombudsman, Whistleblowers Protection Act 2001 – Investigation into the failure of agencies to manage registered sex offenders, February 2011.
2Victorian Ombudsman, Whistleblowers Protection Act 2001 – Investigation into allegations of improper conduct by CenITex officers, October 2012.