Within the 14^th International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) in Bangkok (10-13 November 2010), featuring five plenary sessions and fourty interactive workshops around the key current global challenges of fighting corruption, one of the special sessions focused on presenting and challenging a new generation of corruption assessment tools, which are aimed at strengthening local ownership and impact. Indeed, while first and second generation corruption assessment tools remained at the level of international models, a third generation of nationally-owned tools is emerging.

 

This workshop was designed to build on the insights of a UNDP-TI workshop at the 13th IACC on actionable corruption measurement tools (referred to as “second generation tools”, as opposed to the first generation composite indicators, such as the CPI), and take the debate a step further by interrogating the emerging third generation of tools, which are nationally/locally-owned and honed to address specific national problems and issues, and contrasting them with second generation tools, such as the Global Integrity Index or TI’s National Integrity System approach. Both ‘generations’ of tools seem to have their pros and cons. For the second generation, the question is raised about the extent to which they can be locally owned and have actual impact on the ground, whereas for the third generation, the question is to what extent they can be useful beyond their original context.

 

John Samuel, UNDP/OGC Advisor on Democratic Governance Assessments, chaired this workshop, where several organizations from across the world which have been developing and implementing these tools, as well as external experts, presented their approaches and opinions on the success criteria of these tools in terms of offering solutions for policy reform. Panelists included representatives from Global Integrity, the World Bank, Transparencia por Columbia, IDASA (African Democracy Institute) and others.

 

The debate highlighted the critical need for assessment tools which look at actual governance processes in specific local contexts, empower citizens to hold the powerful accountable, and enable stakeholders to compare governance over time and space in a country. Universal and context-specific indicators can be combined to achieve these goals, or, rather, universal criteria can be translated into context-specific indicators by local experts and stakeholders, through participatory and inclusive processes.

 

The complete workshop report can be downloaded here.

 

For more information on the 14^thIACC, see: www.14iacc.org

 

Photo: IACC