Howard Whitton

Visiting Fellow, University of Canberra
Howard Whitton a specialist in Public Sector Ethics, with a career of over twenty years in three Australian public services, and ten years as an international consultant. In Australia, Howard has served as a senior or principal policy adviser on ethics and integrity matters in various central agencies including the Australian Public Service Board and Merit Protection Agency (MPRA), the Public Sector Management Commission of Queensland, and the ACT Chief Minister’s Department. He served as Principal Adviser, Ethics, for the Electoral and Administrative Review Commission (EARC) of Queensland, following the Fitzgerald Commission of Inquiry into Police Corruption, in 1990-91: in that capacity he was the principal author of Australia’s first Public Sector Ethics law, and a co-author of a new approach to Whistleblower Protection legislation which was later followed by Queensland and other Australian jurisdictions, and was influential in the new Whistleblower laws of New Zealand, the UK, and the United Nations General Assembly.

From 2000 to 2009 Howard worked as a specialist policy adviser on Public Sector Ethics, Conflicts of Interest, and Whistleblower Protection with various international organisations, including the OECD’s Public Governance Directorate, UNESCO, UNDP, the UN Secretariat, and a wide range of national governments and anti-corruption agencies. His work on Ethics and Integrity in Government has been presented at numerous UN Global Forums and international conferences on Public Sector Ethics. He is the principal author of the highly-regarded OECD Guidelines and Toolkit on Managing Conflicts of Interest, now published in over 30 languages, and the Australian Government’s Standards of Ministerial Ethics, enacted in 2007. Howard was a member of the implementation team which established the UN Ethics Office in New York in 2006, in response to the Oil-for-Food scandal.

Howard is an invited member of the editorial boards of the US-based journals Public Integrity and the Journal of Public Affairs Education, and was recently elected as a member of the Board of the Ethics Section of the American Society for Public Administration.

Howard consults in Australia and internationally on public sector ethics, integrity and Conflict of Interest policy; Whistleblower protection policy; anti-corruption strategies; and Ethics training for appointed and elected officials using a video-based methodology for strengthening ‘Ethical Competence’. Howard qualified first as a teacher, and he has also worked in professional theatre management and University administration: he holds a Bachelor of Arts (in English, Early English, and Philosophy) from the Australian National University, and a Graduate Diploma in Education from Sydney University.