How to make a public interest disclosure
People generally know when something is wrong, or when another person in their organisation is not doing things the way that they should be.
The Public Interest Disclosure Act 2010 (the PID Act) provides a way for people to disclose information about serious wrongdoing in the public sector and protects them for ‘speaking up’. The PID Act sets out what type of information is a public interest disclosure and the obligations and protections for those who report public interest disclosures (PIDs).
It is important to support people who report wrongdoing because:
- wrongdoing such as fraud and corruption increases the cost of providing public services
- alerting an organisation to wrongdoing provides senior officers with an opportunity to fix it, and
- it is in everyone’s interests that dangers to public health and safety or to the environment are dealt with.