The Dutch Whistleblowers Authority in an international perspective: a comparative study

Abstract

The Dutch Whistleblowers Authority (Huis voor klokkenluiders) was created in July 2016. After a year into its existence, it commissioned research into how its tasks and mandates compared to whistleblowing agencies in other countries. This report is the result of that research. The report presents an international comparison of institutions with advisory, psychosocial care, investigative and/or preventative tasks with regard to whistleblowing. The characteristics of the Dutch Whistleblowers Authority are the starting point of that comparison. The research involved a comparison of the above dimensions in the Netherlands with those in ten other countries: Australia, Belgium, France, Ireland, Israel, Norway, Republic of Korea, Serbia, UK, and USA. For each of these countries, information was sought about reporting culture, legal context, and the institutional context. The legal context included how the whistleblowing legislation had emerged, the scope of wrongdoing in the whistleblowing legislation, and the scope of protected persons (target group) of the whistleblowing legislation. The institutional context included information about tasks and mandates of the agencies that implement the whistleblowing legislation, institutional characteristics of the agencies that perform any of the tasks similar to those of the Dutch Whistleblowers Authority, and mandates for the protection of whistleblowers. The findings in this report were arrived at through analysis of policy and legislative documents, analysis of existing research reports about selected institutions and implementation of whistleblowing legislation, and interviews with representatives of whistleblowing institutions or whistleblowing experts (academics) from the selected countries. In total 17 telephone interviews and four face-to-face interviews were conducted. These respondents also reviewed the respective country summaries we developed based on these three data sources