What is System Integrity

Institute for Systems Integrity (ISI)

System integrity refers to the capacity of an organisation or institution to maintain safe, lawful, and ethical decision-making under sustained stress.

It is not a personal virtue, a compliance checklist, or a cultural slogan. System integrity is an emergent property of how structures, incentives, information flows, and accountability mechanisms interact over time.

An organisation can be staffed by capable, ethical individuals and still lack system integrity.

Integrity vs intention

Many governance failures occur without malicious intent. Decisions are often made:

• Under time pressure
• With incomplete or distorted information
• Inside incentive structures that reward short-term performance

System integrity focuses on whether the system consistently supports sound decisions — especially when conditions deteriorate.

Key components of system integrity

A system with integrity typically demonstrates:

• Clear decision rights: authority and accountability are aligned
• Signal fidelity: bad news travels upward without distortion
• Incentive coherence: rewards do not undermine stated values
• Adaptive oversight: governance adjusts as conditions change

When these degrade, integrity fails — often silently.

Why system integrity matters

Failures of system integrity explain why organisations:

• Follow the rules, yet cause harm
• Appear compliant but behave recklessly
• Reward resilience while tolerating structural overload

From healthcare to finance to AI deployment, integrity failures are rarely sudden. They emerge through governance drift under stress.

System integrity is therefore not a moral concept.
It is a design and oversight problem.

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