Why should I submit a report?

Compliance with statutory, social and internal company rules is part of a positive and transparent company culture.

You may have knowledge of professional malpractice, violations of internal policies or breaches of applicable law at the Vienna Business Agency.

Your report will help the Vienna Business Agency to address such situations early, discover problems, prevent untoward developments and thereby protect itself from financial losses and reputation damage.

What kinds of report can I submit through this platform?

Reports of legal violations and violations of internal rules are accepted and forwarded to the internal reporting office of the Vienna Business Agency. These include, for example, reports of suspected corruption, breach of trust, fraud and the like as well as violations of public contracting rules and of regulations to prevent money laundering or protect personal data.

Please refrain from using this system as a platform for complaints. Complaints of a general nature must be directed to your direct manager or the HR department.

You will receive detailed information on the possible categories of a report during the reporting process.

Can submitting a report have negative consequences for me?

The whistleblowing system used here, BKMS^® System, places the utmost importance on protecting the whistleblower. Neither the operator of the system (EQS Group AG) nor the employer or any third party has access to the submitted reports. The technical guarantee of confidentiality has been certified multiple times.

Some important information on this topic:

• During the report process, please take care to protect your own anonymity (e.g. by redacting data when uploading documents) and not to accidentally disclose your identity.
• Do not use any device (such as a PC, notebook, tablet or smartphone) that has been provided by your company to submit your report.
• Intentionally false accusations (defamation), in other words submitting reports that are obviously false or misleading, will be rejected and could result in legal consequences.

How do I submit a report, and how do I set up a postbox?

You can submit your report either anonymously or using your name. In both cases, start by clicking the ‘Submit report’ button located at the top of our introduction page.

There are 4 steps to the report process:

1. First, you will be asked to read some information on the protection of your anonymity and to respond to a security query.
2. On the next page, you will be asked to select the category of your report.
3. On the report page, you can elaborate on your report in your own words and answer questions about the case by simply selecting responses. In the free text field, you can write 5,000 characters, which corresponds to a full A4 page. You may also submit a file of up to 5 MB to support your report. Please bear in mind that documents can contain information about the author. After you have submitted your report, you will receive a reference number as proof that you successfully submitted your report via this platform.
4. You can then can set up your own secured postbox. With this secured postbox, you can receive information from us about the handling of your report or receive and answer any questions that may arise – all while remaining fully anonymous.

If you already have a secured postbox, you can access it directly via the ‘Login’ button. Here, too, you will have to answer a security query first.

As long as you do not enter any data which allows conclusions to be drawn about your identity, your anonymity is protected by the BKMS^® System technology.

How do I receive feedback and remain anonymous at the same time?

To receive feedback from the reporting office and still remain anonymous, you must set up a secured postbox. You can do this after sending your report.

The reporting office can also use the secured postbox to inform you of what is happening with your report. Furthermore, the secured postbox allows the reporting office to ask questions about your report.

When setting up your secured postbox, you must choose a user name and a password as access credentials. These are not visible to anyone except yourself. If you lose your login information, please submit a new report and set up a new postbox. If possible, please specify the reference number of your previous report. The new postbox will not contain any content associated with your previous report.

Your report is kept anonymous through encryption and other specialised security measures. You will never be asked for personal information if you submit a report anonymously.

Are my data secure?

The BKMS^® System process places the utmost importance on protecting the whistleblower. Your report will be encrypted, secured by special security measures and stored in an external database in a high-security data centre. Reports cannot be traced. You are not required to provide personal information at any point in the reporting process. When you set up your secured postbox, you select your own user name and password. Only you can see these access credentials.

To protect your anonymity, do not share any data that can be traced back to you. We recommend that you do not use any device (such as a PC, notebook, tablet or smartphone) that has been provided by your company to submit your report.