The Cremer document mixes two different types of whistleblower policies: protection and incentives. Protection is about trying to ensure that organisations do not disincentivize employees or other insiders from trying to address illegal/undesired activities of the organisation through for example threats or punishments. Whistleblower incentives are about incentivizing insiders to address illegal/undesired activities.
The recent EU whistleblowing directive for example is a rather complex piece of legislation that aims to protect whistleblowers from e.g. being fired by their employers in some situations.
The US SEC whistleblowing program on the other hand incentivizes whistleblowing by providing financial awards, some 10-30% of sanctions collected, for information that leads to significant findings. This policy, for the US, has a quickly estimated return of 5-10x through first order effects, and possibly many times that in second order effects through stopping fraud and reducing the expected value of fraud in general. The SEC gives several awards each month. A report about the program is available here for those interested.
Whistleblower protections tend to be more bureaucratic and are already covered by US and EU legislation to such an extent that improving them seems difficult. Whistleblower incentive mechanisms meanwhile seem much more worthwhile to investigate, because such a mechanism could be operated by a small centralized function without adding any new bureaucracy to existing organisations. I suspect that even a minimal whistleblower incentive* mechanism would reduce risks and increase trust within the EA diaspora by increasing the probability that we become aware of risky situations before they snowball into larger crises.
(*incentives here might not mean financial awards like in the SEC program, but something like helping the whistleblower find a new job, or taking the responsibility for investigating the information further instead of expecting the whistleblower to do it. I’d guess that most whistleblowing reports in EA, if any, would involve junior workers who are afraid of losing their income or status in the community, or simply do not have the energy, network, or skills to address the issue directly themselves.)
The Cremer document mixes two different types of whistleblower policies: protection and incentives. Protection is about trying to ensure that organisations do not disincentivize employees or other insiders from trying to address illegal/undesired activities of the organisation through for example threats or punishments. Whistleblower incentives are about incentivizing insiders to address illegal/undesired activities.
The recent EU whistleblowing directive for example is a rather complex piece of legislation that aims to protect whistleblowers from e.g. being fired by their employers in some situations.
The US SEC whistleblowing program on the other hand incentivizes whistleblowing by providing financial awards, some 10-30% of sanctions collected, for information that leads to significant findings. This policy, for the US, has a quickly estimated return of 5-10x through first order effects, and possibly many times that in second order effects through stopping fraud and reducing the expected value of fraud in general. The SEC gives several awards each month. A report about the program is available here for those interested.
Whistleblower protections tend to be more bureaucratic and are already covered by US and EU legislation to such an extent that improving them seems difficult. Whistleblower incentive mechanisms meanwhile seem much more worthwhile to investigate, because such a mechanism could be operated by a small centralized function without adding any new bureaucracy to existing organisations. I suspect that even a minimal whistleblower incentive* mechanism would reduce risks and increase trust within the EA diaspora by increasing the probability that we become aware of risky situations before they snowball into larger crises.
(*incentives here might not mean financial awards like in the SEC program, but something like helping the whistleblower find a new job, or taking the responsibility for investigating the information further instead of expecting the whistleblower to do it. I’d guess that most whistleblowing reports in EA, if any, would involve junior workers who are afraid of losing their income or status in the community, or simply do not have the energy, network, or skills to address the issue directly themselves.)