Local Integrity Initiative

The Local Integrity Initiative has the objective to meet a demand in the development community for actionable data at the sub-national level, in order to inform policy choices and priorities at the county, state, provincial, or regional level in a country. The Local Integrity Initiative applies a series of rigorous quantitative indicators to states, counties, or provinces within a country to assess the strengths and weaknesses of sub-national anticorruption and good governance mechanisms. The goals of the Local Integrity Initiative are to generate credible and actionable data assessing the existence and effectiveness of key governance and anti-corruption mechanisms at the county-level and designing an evidencebased advocacy and outreach campaigns.

Information is primarily objective (e.g. a web link to a relevant report, or reference to a specific law or institution), drawing sometimes from more subjective sources (e.g. an interview conducted with a knowledgeable individual), but always backed up with evidence.

The sub-national Integrity Indicators, like their national counterparts, are based on a simple yet powerful concept. Rather than trying to measure actual corruption, considered virtually impossible by experts, the tool quantitatively assesses the opposite of corruption, that is, the access that citizens and businesses have to a  country’s provincial, regional or state government; their ability to monitor its behaviour; and their ability to seek redress and advocate for improved governance. The sub-national Integrity Indicators break down that “access” into a number of categories and indicators. In table 42 it is possible to see the categories and sub-categories in which indicators are organised in the pilot study in Liberia.

Each sub-category is assessed through scorecards that contain indicators are assessing the following three different conditions:

1. The existence of public integrity mechanisms, including laws and institutions, which promote public accountability and limit corruption (indicators assessing the laws, regulations, and agency/enteritis that are place at the sub-national level.
2. The effectiveness of those mechanisms (indicators assessing such aspects of public integrity as those same mechanisms’ protection from political  interference; appointments that support the independence of an agency; professional, full-time staffing and funding; independently initiated investigations; and regular imposition of penalties).
3. The access that citizens have to those mechanisms (indicators assessing the availability of public reports to citizens, or publicly available information, within a reasonable time period and at a reasonable cost).

All indicators, regardless of type, are scored on the same ordinal scale of 0 to 100 with zero being the worst possible score and 100 perfect. “In law” indicators provide an objective assessment of whether certain legal codes, fundamental rights, government institutions, and regulations exist. These “de jure” indicators are scored with a simple “yes” or “no” with “yes” receiving a 100 score and “no” receiving a zero. “In practice” indicators address de facto issues such as implementation, effectiveness enforcement, and citizen access. As these usually require a more nuanced assessment, these “in practice” indicators are scored along an ordinal scale of zero to 100 with possible scores at 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100.Well-defined criteria are set to score indicators.

Within the sub-category “Sub National rule of law”, in the set of indicators developed for the Liberian pilot project, there are two indicators assessing whether women have full access to the formal sub-national as well as customary justice system.

There is no explicit poverty focus. However, in the set of indicators developed for the Liberian pilot project, within the sub-category “Sub National rule of law”, there some
indicators poverty-related: is an indicator assessing that judicial decisions in the formal sub-national as well as customary justice system are not affected by racial, ethnic, and religious bias, an indicator assessing whether the sub-national government provides adequate legal counsel for defendants in criminal cases who cannot afford it, an indicator assessing whether citizens earning the median yearly income can afford to bring a legal suit. Furthermore, within the sub-category “Sub National Law Enforcement”, there is an indicator assessing whether all citizens regardless of their race, ethnicity, and religion have equal access to the law enforcement agency acting on the sub-national level.

Sub-National Civil Society, Public Information and Media
LIB-1-1 Sub-National Civil Society Organizations
LIB-1-2 Sub-National Media
LIB-1-3 Sub-National Public Access to Information

http://local.lr2007.globalintegrity.org/