The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) has found a Service NSW officer corrupt and presented Service NSW with recommendations to prevent similar corruption from occurring again.
In its report, Investigation into the conduct of a Service NSW officer, ICAC said it found the Customer Service Officer engaged in serious corrupt conduct by agreeing to alter records held by Service NSW in exchange for a benefit, and improperly accessing restricted database information.
The report said the officer engaged in serious corrupt conduct on 5 January 2019 by agreeing with a friend to affect the transfer of a motor vehicle registration in return for a financial benefit.
It said the officer also provided the friend with the wording for a false statutory declaration to facilitate the registration transfer, along with instructions on how to ensure the Officer was the one who dealt with the transaction.
ICAC said the same officer engaged in serious corrupt conduct again on 17 July 2019 by intentionally and dishonestly causing another Customer Service Officer at Service NSW to access the DRIVES restricted database about the original purchase price paid by a seller for a vehicle purchased by the officer’s sister, information which was passed on to the officer’s sister.
“The Report notes that Service NSW had some measures in place to manage risks,” ICAC said.
“The Commission’s investigation, however, highlighted two areas of significant risk at the Agency – the risk of access to information and the risk of serving family and friends,” it said.
It said Service NSW’s quality control framework failed to adequately address the misuse of information risks, and the Agency held a misplaced confidence in the effectiveness of its controls.
ICAC made four corruption prevention recommendations to Service NSW, including that it implement a risk-based system to improve detection of unauthorised access of personal information; provide clear guidance on the circumstances where managers could allow an employee to perform transactions in DRIVES for family members or friends; establish a single electronic family and friends register to operate across all service centres; and identify which relevant information from the register should be reported to the Operational Governance Team.
ICAC’s 62-page Report can be downloaded from the ICAC website at this PS News link.
