The Public Service Regulations of 2016 require the Minister of Public Service and Administration to maintain an occupational classification system. Public Service departments must then link all their positions to a specific occupation on this system.

Until 2023, departments were only required to ‘designate’ Ethics Officers. In practice, this meant that someone holding another position would additionally be tasked with ethics management responsibilities, often on top of their existing duties. However, the 2023 update to the Public Service Regulations introduced a small but significant change. Executive authorities are now required to ‘designate or appoint’ Ethics Officers for their departments. The inclusion of ‘appoint’ now allows for individuals to be appointed into full-time, dedicated Ethics Officer positions.

This change created a need for formal recognition of the Ethics Officer occupation. Subsequently, the job title was incorporated into the Public Service Occupational Classification System: Occupational Dictionary in February 2024.

The Ethics Officer role is classified under Professionals, specifically Policy Administration Professionals. This category also includes other roles such as Compliance Officer, Fraud Examiner, Internal Auditor, Risk and Integrity Specialist, Risk Officer, and Diplomat.

The role description of an Ethics Officer is defined as: ‘Promotes and implements the code of conduct, including anti-corruption, ethics, and integrity management.’

This marks another vital step towards the institutionalisation of Ethics Officer roles within organisations. Well done to the colleagues at the Department of Public Service and Administration for enabling this achievement!