A New Idea: Lifestyle Audits

Have you ever wondered how a local government department head can afford to live like a king on a $100,000 salary?

This is what people are wondering in South Africa, where union leaders are calling for "lifestyle audits" of all senior government officials in order to find out who is on the take, according to an article in today's New York Times. According to an article in The Mercury this week, the nation's Public Service Commission wants to perform these audits, because government departments have ignored its complaints about senior officials who have failed for many years to file financial disclosure statements.

The most direct result of these calls for lifestyle audits is that the country's news media are effectively performing such audits themselves, but only on the big-name officials. Details about the number of houses, the types of cars, even the number of wives and children are coming out in the press, and most likely information about the officials' government contracts and other benefits from public service will follow.

Lifestyle is a good, although only circumstantial indicator of unethical government conduct. It is the rare individual who can benefit illicitly from a government job and live just as he or she did before. Such lifestyle changes are the stuff of local rumors, sometimes of boasting and, on the part of many local residents, vicarious enjoyment.

Perhaps a lifestyle audit could be the penalty for failing to file financial disclosure statements, for failing to disclose conflicts, and for getting caught omitting one or more important details from disclosures. If nothing else, such a penalty would be an open invitation to the local news media to investigate the rumors, and the boasting. And the prospect of that might be enough to get many officials to more fully comply with disclosure requirements.