Swiss Federal Audit Office SFAO

Cross-sectional audit of secondary occupations with a focus on conflicts of interest

2023 CH2023conflictsInterestSecondaryOcc
SCALE
  • - The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) together employ almost 900 professors, about one third of whom have declared at least one secondary occupation. Secondary employment is much less common among other staff. Around 150 ongoing secondary occupations were recorded for the approximately 4,200 research institute employees.
COMPLIANCE FOCUS
  • - Federal Institutes of Technology Act
  • - ETH Professorial Ordinance
  • - Personnel Ordinance
  • - regulations for founding of spin-offs
PERFORMANCE ASPECT
  • - effectiveness of measures to prevent financial or reputational damage
  • - effectiveness of rules regarding knowledge transfer
1. Reporting - Purpose

At the research institutes, these notification and approval processes are kept simple and serve their purpose. (…) the EPFL has a greater need for action, which it has itself already recognised. At the time of the audit, there was no uniform process for employees and professors to report their secondary occupations.

2. Monitoring - Data collection

In 2022, ETH Zurich set up an electronic workflow in which employees and professors have to record their secondary occupations. Again, this system is kept simple, is easily accessible and is therefore appropriate. (…) there was no overview of employees' secondary occupations, as these reports, unlike those of profesors, are not recorded centrally .

Code (gexf) to continue analysis with GephiTerminology graph
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The items above were selected and named by the e-Government Subgroup of the EUROSAI IT Working Group on the basis of publicly available report of the author Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI). In the same way, the Subgroup prepared the analytical assumptions and headings. All readers are encouraged to consult the original texts by the author SAIs (linked).