Description
Exposing misconduct or illegal activity is not a common activity within the Slovak society. The project tends to change the public discourse about the whistleblowing. The aim is to affect perception of people towards whistleblowing, thus develop a trust of public in these activities. It is focused mainly on groups such as employers, employees and experts. The first phase of the project is analytical and deals with drawing of a „map of problems“. It is based on case studies and interviews with various stakeholders (whistleblowers, police, prosecutors, employers, NGOs). In the second phase the meetings with the working group will take place. They will elaborate on action plans that will lead to a proper set up of programs for whistleblowers protection. In the third phase project experts will be pilot testing the action plans in two institutions. The last phase includes a workshop for dissemination of findings and networking. The project is beneficial for NGOs, employers and employees.
Summary of project results
Project Whistleblowers protection tools in practice was submitted at that time when the lack of protection of whistleblowers was alerted by the European Commission and at the same time several opinion pools confirmed that protected whistleblowing in not one of the strength of the Slovak system. The aim of the project was to moderate the negative attitude to this topic and to start the necessary changes in social debate, positively affect the communication of this problems between employees, employers and professionals. All planned activities of the project were realized: analytical (the output in form of case studies and so called Map of the problems), networking of relevant participants (representatives of the employers and employees as well as the professionals from NGO sphere – Foundation Stop the corruption, Alliance Fair Play with main results in form of Action Plans), testing of the plans in practice (the outputs in form of reports of the implementation in selected city and company and the analytical report) and at the end the workshop as a space for open discussion and networking of professionals. Different target groups (employers, professional and NGO representatives) were directly engaged in all mentioned outputs and all activities behind. Permanent sustainability of the project is ensured mostly through attested Action plans which could be easily transferred into other institutions with the possibility to adopt tested solutions. The networking of NGO with other representatives (mainly during workshop) open the space for further cooperation on theme of whistleblowers protection which could be used by other companies in fulfillment of their legal obligations. From this perspective we consider the aims of the project to be fulfilled. This hypothesis could be confirmed later by opinion pool (similar to than in 2012), in which the change will be reflected in increasing number of people willing to indicate the malpractice. At the same time we declare that we consider the project to be successful from the point of starting up discussion and we evaluated it as necessary in communication of whistleblowing topic between employees, employers and professionals.
Summary of bilateral results