Global Integrity Commons

International Anti-Corruption Day: Zombie Advocacy for a Dead Policy

2009-12-09T11:31:00.013-05:00

It's International Anti-Corruption Day, and Global Integrity is having an internal debate over whether anyone should notice. Created with great fanfare as an advocacy tool to build momentum for the UN Convention Against Corruption, this "Day" is leftover hype for a specific policy that has already launched, crashed and burned. Forgive us for not breaking out our party hats.

This sort of bland, omnibus awareness-raising effort always seemed to me like a weird fit with anti-corruption because in so many places we've worked corruption is something citizens are already keenly aware of. Like with "corruption" metrics, the labeling problem is here -- what exactly are we talking about on the day of "International Anti-Corruption"?

In this case, as Daniel Kaufmann reminds on his blog, we're talking about the UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC). The UN designated "day" was created in 2003 to "raise awareness of corruption and of the role of the United Nations Convention against Corruption in combating and preventing it". But by now we are painfully aware of the UNCAC's role in "combating" corruption, which as we detailed last month, has become a debacle of toothless, unpublished self-assessments.

Dani's full post (and blog) are worth reading, but this passage should not be missed:

Kaufmann:

[In] late 2003, the UN General Assembly designated December 9th as International Anti-Corruption Day. It was intended to further the UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) and encourage countries to sign and ratify it, so to ensure its swift entry into force. The UNCAC was touted by the UN as ‘the first legally binding, international anti-corruption instrument that provides a chance to mount a global response to corruption.’

What happened since then? Countries signed. Countries ratified. Lots of work by secretariats went into process. And so many government officials and others just gathered in Doha in mid-November, in order to reach closure on six years of work regarding implementing the review mechanism for country progress on anti-corruption. But an important group of governments present in Doha, including China, Russia, Egypt, Pakistan and Zimbabwe were against agreement of serious commitment to such implementation…

The resulting review mechanism for UNCAC is toothless. It gives governments discretion in denying inclusion of civil society in reviewing progress, it introduces voluntarism into monitoring progress (rather than mandating it), and it allows governments to be non-transparent and withhold full publication of country reports. Further, they somehow managed to create what is already by design a very ineffective and bloated implementation review group, which incidentally will not even be allowed to review country reports. And they failed to advance on key pending challenges on asset recovery.

All this conspires against the objective of governments fulfilling their obligations under the UNCAC.

Thus, in the immediate aftermath of such UNCAC setback, today, as we face the (UNCAC-inspired) International Anti-Corruption Day, it may be appropriate to have an hour of silence instead, in order to pause and reflect where we are today, and where we need to go instead. Let us reflect, and try to reboot.

Silence sounds good to us, particularly since our original, two-sentence post on this topic was killed in editing because we don't want you, dear reader, to think we're all jerks.

-- Jonathan Eyler-Werve

Estonia’s Minister of Justice Threatens to Imprison Journalists

2009-12-03T13:20:00.011-05:00

In Estonia, new draft legislation would allow journalists to be incarcerated for up to one year for keeping their sources from the authorities. Reporting on this threat from firsthand experience is Tarmo Vahter, a reporter for weekly newspaper Eesti Ekspress.

My second and thus far last questioning happened a year ago in the basement of the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

On Wismari Street lies Estonia’s most state-of-the-art subterranean proceeding rooms for category-A witnesses / persons to be heard. Mine was numbered 001.

The interior of the room comprised a corner desk, computer and three chairs. One of the walls was probably even see-through from the other side. Like in American police series; so that the colleagues of the interrogator could remain invisible while observing what goes on inside.

Maybe spy Herman Simm, who had been arrested a few weeks earlier, was giving testimony regarding his crimes next door. His ranting could, in any case, not be heard. The interrogator was a special investigator of the Public Prosecutor’s Office. Five years my junior, a tall intelligent-looking man in his early thirties.

He began by apologizing profoundly for having to interrogate a journalist. He even stressed that he would not demand punishment in case I remained silent.

I was, after all, a witness, and during interrogations witnesses are supposed to answer questions. I promised that I would definitely not lie.

The interrogator’s first question was: “What do you know about the data regarding criminal matter No. 06700000067 reaching the employees of Eesti Ekspress?”

Of course I knew, because it concerned the so-called Rävala puiestee case, which led to the prosecution of the former Minister of the Environment, Villu Reiljan, for accepting gratuities. Upon investigating the crime, the Security Police had tapped the phone calls of the prominent persons. These transcripts were included in the criminal case file as material evidence. The court proceedings over Reiljan are still under way; therefore the file is publicly unavailable to journalists.

Thanks to confidential sources, my colleague Sulev Vedler and I managed to become partially acquainted with the stenographs. We learned dirty details regarding some members of the Estonian elite, e.g., sworn advocate Daisy Tauk.

Tauk had warned her client Aivo Pärn about the “tail” attached by the Public Prosecutor's Office. How she came to learn about the “tail” has remained a mystery. A politically sensitive story, considering that Tauk is living with Juhan Parts, the Minister of Economic Affairs and Communication.

The Code of Ethics of the Estonian Press obliges a journalist to protect confidential information sources. This is what I told the interrogator.

Just in case, I added that I would contemplate disclosure of the source if the resolution of a very dangerous crime depended on it. The leaking of sworn advocate Tauk’s phone calls did not, in my opinion, constitute significant damage to the Republic of Estonia or its people.

The interrogator quickly tapped in my answer and presented the next question. Did the Ekspress source work for the Public Prosecutor’s Office?

“I am unable to answer this question due to reasons provided in my previous answer.”

The interrogator repeated the question in five different ways, each time changing the possible employer of the source. My reply remained the same.

The interrogator then printed the minutes of the interrogation on the spot and gave it to me for review. I found no mistakes and signed it.

I spent a total of ten minutes in the basement of the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

In 1996, I was questioned by an investigator of the Central Bureau of Investigation for over three hours with regard to the so-called tape scandal. That was toilsome, but also comical. The late-middle-aged lady didn’t even know how to spell the word “interview”, which I had to spell out to her letter by letter.

In the Parbus case, Ekspress wasn’t interrogated at all

The search for the leak of the Daisy Tauk phone calls ended fruitlessly. Leaks of such a calibre are actually rather rare in Estonia. Meanwhile, Postimees scored with Rein Kilk’s tapped phone call about the so-called “cash-spilling”, which could only have originated from the file of the so-called land exchange criminal case.

Then, Sulev got lucky again. He obtained information regarding the Ivo Parbus criminal case from a well-informed source. Sulev was thus able to write about how some members of the Estonian Centre Party cadged gratuities from real estate developers in Tallinn. The received money enabled a comfortable lifestyle and support for the publishing of the party newspaper Kesknädal.

Shortly after reading Ekspress, the Public Prosecutor’s Office commenced criminal proceedings in order to find Sulev’s source. The investigation was executed by the leading Public Prosecutor Alar Kirs personally.

Among those interrogated was Taavi Aas, the Deputy Mayor of the City of Tallinn. At least one witness told the interrogator about their contact with Sulev and me. We were not summoned for interrogation.

Clever people work at the Public Prosecutor’s Office. They probably guessed that we would hardly disclose our sources.

The police searched for a waiter who spat on a cutlet

The Penal Code allows punishing a witness who refuses to give testimony with a fine or with up to one year in jail. Why did nothing happen to Sulev or me?

The reason is the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects everybody’s right to freedom of expression and has been signed by Estonia. The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg strictly monitors the enforcement of the Convention.

The judges of Strasbourg do not prohibit nation states from searching for those who leak information, however, they allow for the pressuring of journalists in exceptional cases only.

After 2004, the press hasn’t been requested to disclose their sources in Estonia either. It was then that the Tallinn police brought charges against Eesti Päevaleht reporter Sergo Selder in order to find out the name of the waiter who spat on a cutlet.

During the interrogation, Selder had to endure the policeman’s threats, and was also photographed against the mug-shot background like a prisoner. The investigation was concluded when the Prosecutor’s Office stepped in.

Ever since, journalists and the Republic of Estonia have endured a marriage of reason, characteristic to bored couples. The authorities despised the information leaks, but didn’t break source protection by force.

The grudge accumulated, however.

Last summer, Minister of Justice Rein Lang formed a “working group on media freedom legislation”, which went unnoticed by the public. The Ministry remained silent as to the group’s duties.

Only a few weeks ago, the representative of the Ministry of Justice proclaimed at a seminar of the Estonian Newspaper Association that following the European example, Estonian journalists would also have their right to source protection!

Rein Lang actually wishes the opposite. The draft legislation, signed by the Minister, lists over 50 exceptions which oblige journalists to disclose their source to the police, the Prosecutor’s Office and the court. Upon failure to do so, one can be punished with a fine that equals up to 500 daily salaries. Or even face a year in jail, which today seems quite unbelievable. But, if this punishment is not intended to be used, why include it in the law?

In the list, I immediately recognised the section of the Penal Code pursuant to which they searched for the information regarding Tauk and Parbus reaching the editorial board of Ekspress. If Lang’s draft legislation had been adopted last year, the silence by Sulev and me could have entailed our prosecution and conviction.

At worst, we could have been in jail for up to one year regarding the Tauk case. After release, Sulev would have been put right back to jail like an old criminal – this time for the Parbus case. Of course, we could have appealed to the European Court of Human Rights and demanded hefty compensation from the Republic of Estonia in the case of victory.

GoBus secrets awaiting leaker

Lang characterises the impact of his draft legislation as “extensive”. He is right. Should the Act be adopted in the given form in the Riigikogu, investigating the mischief of public authorities and public officials would become very complicated for journalists. It is easier to write about topics which do not entail the looming breach of source protection for the journalist.

Let us take, for example, the section prohibiting disclosure of information on closed court trials. The court is presently trying the former county governor of Valga County, Georg Trashanov, and GoBus. The indictment implies that the bus businessmen gave the county governor a bribe of over EEK 100 000 in order to get favourable line contracts from the state.

GoBus is no random company; they have connections with the political elite. Although the administration of justice in usually public in Estonia, the court is deliberating a large part of the GoBus trial behind closed doors. The official reason is the protection of the business secrets of the bus company, which seems far-fetched.

It would be nice if there were someone from the inner circle bold enough to spill the GoBus secrets to Ekspress. The people have a right to know the truth about such significant matters. If necessary, Sulev and I will endure another interrogation in the basement of the Public Prosecutor’s Office in the name of source protection.

-- Tarmo Vahter. First published in Eesti Ekspress, October 19, 2009

-- Image of Estonia media used courtesy Tarmo Vahter.

MFTransparency: Throwing Light on Microcredit

2009-12-02T08:00:00.005-05:00

In recent years, a handful of microfinance institutions (MFIs) have come under fire for charging low-income clients extremely high interest rates for their microcredit loans. The 120 percent annual interest rates offered by Mexico’s leading MFI, Compartamos, has produced profits but dubious public benefit, provoking outrage among fellow practitioners.

A new venture hopes separate the lenders from the loan sharks by improving transparency into the terms of microfinance loans.

In July 2008, Chuck Waterfield of Columbia University teamed up with Nobel laureate Mohammed Yunus (pictured) to launch MFTransparency, an initiative dedicated to “providing transperent pricing in the microfinance industry”. While MFIs customarily disclose information on their financing, non-transparent pricing is widespread -- interest rates change substantially relative to loan size, making it difficult for clients to understand how much they are actually being charged. Closing fees, savings accounts requirements, interests on savings, and numerous other charges need to be factored into the initially quoted monthly interest rate, leading to a highly confusing pricing situation that provides much room for exploitative money-lending practices.

MFTransparency uses data voluntarily provided by MFIs around the world to publish Annual Percentage Rate (APR) and Effective Interest Rate (EIR) calculations online. It is hoped that this initiative will give MFIs, clients and donors a clearer estimation of market price, and put pressure on institutions currently making large profits by charging their clients extortive interest rates. MFTransparency has recently released data for Cambodia as it progresses through a set of pilot countries.

This project has been applauded by a number of microfinance experts and should bring the industry closer to its initial mandate: providing the unbanked with low-cost access to financial services.

Our Take...

We have some reservations, however, regarding the usefulness of the data in its current form. While the pricing data published online will certainly be extremely valuable to researchers and microfinance experts in terms of providing benchmarks and opportunities for self-evaluation, it seems unlikely that developing-country clients will access these analyses -- much less understand them -- when deciding whether or not to take a loan with a given institution. Providing truthful data is only the first step to establishing a more transparent environment. Making this data user-friendly and and within reach of clients is important too.

Fortunately, some fixes aren't hard to imagine. Technical analysis can be simplified into letter-grade evaluations similar to mutual fund ratings. Web-based APR calculators might help. Connecting with community leaders familiar with microcredit and other traditional publicity efforts could help get these tools in the hands of people who can use them. High ranking MFIs should be willing to help spread the word of their positive ratings, perhaps through a certification program similar to other consumer products like lumber or coffee.

MFTransparency could also consider taking its investigative effort one step further and reporting social performance indicators alongside APRs (the example has already been set by MIX Market).

While there is always room for improvement, we like MFTransparency. It's a strategically sound initiative with great potential to draw a bright line between those who are empowering the poor and those who are exploiting them.

-- Julie Biau

-- Top image by Michael Foley Photography (cc by/nc/sa)

-- Second image by SpreePiX (cc by/nc/sa)

Bankers, Heal Thyself: Reforming the World Bank's Internal Governance

2009-11-18T08:00:00.003-05:00

Disclosure: The World Bank is a funder of Global Integrity.

Governance has been one of the key issues that the World Bank has been focusing on and pushing for on recent years. But, how does the World Bank fare itself in this department?

In the fall of 2008 Robert Zoellick, the current World Bank president, invited the current Director of the Center for the Study of Globalization at Yale University and former President of Mexico Ernesto Zedillo to chair an international commission that would review the World Bank’s governance. This was an 11 member commission which issued a report this past October. As a follow-up, the Center for Global Development (CGD) organized a panel discussion in early November for the Washington DC launch of this report. The panelists, including Ernesto Zedillo, agreed that the Bank's initiative to complete an internal review is a forward-thinking effort.

The World Bank’s governance strengths and shortcomings

Zedillo gave a brief summary of the report and highlighted some of the key findings. Some of the World Bank’s governance strengths he mentioned are the representation of member countries in the governing bodies of this organization, and the link between shareholding and voting (at least in principle) which creates a flexible system.

The report indentified three main shortcomings:

Strategy formulation. It is not produced to have full support and ownership of the shareholders. The Executive Board (Board of Directors) isn’t held responsible for the World Bank Group’s overall strategic direction. Consequently, decisions of strategic significance are left to management as part of the Bank’s day-to-day business.

Voice and Participation. The report finds that there is not a fair distribution of votes. Some of the main issues are a voting gap between developing countries and developed countries, and the over-representation of European countries in the Executive Board.

Accountability. There is a fundamental problem where the Executive Board wants to fulfill three contradictory roles: political representation, managerial responsibility and oversight. Zedillo called it an “impossible trinity” (or since the Board tries to fulfill these roles it may be an “improper trinity”). Besides the conflict of interest issues related to overseeing yourself, the Executive Board’s multiple responsibilities leave it with little time to deal with strategy formulation and oversight.

(For a more in-depth anaylsis of the report see the CGD blog.)

The discussion: The hows are more important than the whats

What was notable from the discussion was learning that there have been similar reports that have called for governance reforms in the past with strikingly similar recommendations that have been ignored. Lawrence MacDonald, a Vice President of CGD and moderator for this panel, mentioned as an example the 2005 report Five Crucial tasks for the New President of the World Bank, in which one of the panelists, Nancy Birdsall was an author. MacDonald remarked that “unfortunately I think all five of those tasks remain undone.”

One of the panelists Moisés Naím, the editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy, was a former Executive Director of the World Bank and thus was a part of the Executive Board. He also was part of a committee that was set up to change the Executive Board’s procedures. Naím pointed out that previous studies/reports on World Bank’s governance, including one he had worked on in 1994, and the most recent one reach similar conclusions. This shows that there is an apparent consensus among what should be done, but nothing has changed. So Naím brought up the question that why if there is practically the consensus on what to do, things don’t change? He argued that it is a matter of power, a reluctance to give in concessions.

Birdsall, the CGD president, suggested that to stimulate change, the leadership must come from the US with a partner like Brazil or China. To her some changes can be obtained through bargaining. She drew attention to the fact that World Bank governance reform might entail different governance structure and thus different boards for two of the World Bank’s institutions: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), and the International Development Association (IDA). So the Europeans could relinquish some of their chairs in the IBRD if their participation in IDA is increased.

Zedillo sees the World Bank as a necessary institution, among other things a venue for international cooperation (he argues that the lack of international cooperation before the financial crisis of 2008 was at the root cause of the crisis). Some of the main assets he recognized are its capacity to raise and channel funds into development, and a highly skilled and trained staff which includes a cross-country stock of development expertise.

Zedillo insisted that governance reform in the World Bank is necessary to ensure its sustainability. A “good governance” structure would enable the institution to be adaptable, accountable and consequently be legitimate. He added that the current state of the Bank is not sustainable and this may lead to it becoming irrelevant or inconsequential; then in the future there would be a need to create a new World Bank from scratch.

The written report, Zedillo and the panelists agree that change must come from the leadership of the heads of state and possibly the ministers, not from the Executive Board itself. Zedillo admits that the report doesn’t include a strategy to convince the key players to implement a governance reform. As he eloquently put it, it is a matter of vision and political leadership to undertake the necessary changes. A short-sighted perspective will doom this institution.

-- Renato Busquets and Global Integrity

Transparency International Releases Corruption Perceptions Index 2009

2009-11-17T16:32:00.006-05:00

Transparency International (TI) publishes its annual index of perceptions of national levels of corruptions today. Here is the official TI press release, and discussion on TI's Space for Transparency blog.

As has become tradition, newspapers throughout the world are quick to point out how Country X has improved (or dropped) in the 2009 CPI ranking vis-à-vis last year’s index even though TI warns fairly explicitly against these sorts of comparisons: “The CPI is not intended to measure a country's progress over time. It is a snapshot of perceptions of corruption, using data published in the past two years.” You can find the detailed methodology used to assemble the index on TI’s website.

As we reported in September, the CPI’s creator Dr. Johann Graf Lambsdorff is no longer publishing the index for TI, which has taken on responsibility for generating the index in-house with all the beta transformations, percentile matching, and other statistical techniques involved in blending the source data together.

In our experience with our own index, any kind of ranking is an easy news hook. But beyond awareness raising, we find rankings contribute little to the hard work of policy reform. Other assessments -- some of them also made by TI, like the National Integrity System assessments or Global Corruption Barometer -- are more likely to come up in discussions with local activists or development practitioners. But a quick look at Google Trends will show you that none of those releases drive media like the Corruption Perceptions Index, which may make it hard for TI to let go.

-- Renato Busquets and Global Integrity

UNCAC Non-Public Self-Assessments Fight Unemployment. Corruption? Not So Much.

2009-11-13T12:36:00.007-05:00

We don’t enjoy being the skunks at the garden party, but we can’t help but feel that today’s announcement of a new self-monitoring mechanism for signatories to the UN Convention Against Corruption is little more than an expansion of bureaucratic turf with virtually zero potential for changing lives on the ground.

To quote the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (whose portfolio includes implementation of the UNCAC):

After a week of intense negotiations, States have agreed to a mechanism to monitor implementation of the United Nations Convention against Corruption.
…
Under the new mechanism, all States will be monitored every five years to see how they are living up to their obligations. Findings, based on self-assessments and peer reviews by experts, will be compiled in country review reports. The executive summary of these reports will be made public.
…
The country reports will identify gaps in national anti-corruption laws and practices. Strengths and weaknesses will also be revealed by a self-assessment checklist based on new software developed by UNODC. This analysis will enable more effective delivery of technical assistance.

Highlights and Lowlights

Let’s review the key points:

Self-assessments: [Groan]. We understand the UN is a lowest common denominator organization and that the existing multilateral assessment models are also based on self- and peer-assessments (see the Council of Europe’s GRECO process, Africa’s APRM mechanism, and the Organization of American States’ peer review process). But count us underwhelmed by the potential for honest self-assessments on this issue. Self-assessments are almost always a blend of real facts and political polish (or whitewash, if you want to be more critical). Third-party, external assessments are, in our opinion, the most accurate and unbiased ways to measure progress and can still involve government (country ownership – we’re for it).

When you consider that UNCAC implementation could conceivably become a precondition for development aid… get ready for some “assessments” that read like tourism brochures.

(See our A Users' Guide to Measuring Corruption for a full discussion.)

Five years: Really? Every five years is the best we can do? How many administrations will be in and out of office in how many UNCAC countries without an assessment having ever been done?

Software: We’re all for using technology to promote anti-corruption reforms, but from what we gather, UNODC’s new software seems unlikely to address the trust issues with the underlying information. We’ve requested a copy to take it for a test drive and will withhold final judgment until then, but we wonder how much money was spent to develop this software and whether it could have been done with Google Forms for free.

(Lack of) Transparency: It is simply shameful that the full assessments will not be made public. (UNODC: “The executive summary of these reports will be made public.”) This is an anti-corruption treaty in which transparency plays a foundational role in curbing corruption! I simply don’t buy the argument that keeping the full assessments out of the public eye is worth getting a deal done to have any assessments at all.

The bottom line

Which brings me to a final point: the kind of watered down, half-baked monitoring mechanism agreed today begs the question “Is this even worth it at all?”

My answer to that would be no; I would rather have no assessment process than the one agreed in Doha. Why? Like the UNCAC itself, what was agreed at Doha has the potential to turn into a simple box-checking exercise for governments to claim “progress” in the fight against corruption (“Look, we just published an assessment!”) when in fact, as experienced by citizens, there is no progress.

Will these assessments lead to meaningful policy changes in most countries? I am highly doubtful. Will they improve the lives of the average citizens in most countries? I’m even more doubtful.

Will they create a nice new “portfolio” of work for staff at UNODC headquarters in Vienna? You bet. And that’s where we’ll ultimately find the greatest “impact” of these assessments to be, I suspect -- in expanded international bureaucratic turf.

(I should note that there is debate among our staff over whether a flawed assessment is better than none at all in this context. We often support incremental solutions.)

The way forward

A great many civil society groups like Transparency International and Global Witness were lobbying hard for an open, effective assessment process. This is not the outcome they wanted. For the most part, they were themselves shut out of the most crucial negotiations. We're grateful for the efforts they made, regardless of the result.

Global Integrity is primarily an information provider, not an advocacy organization. While we did participate in some of the high-level presentations in the lead-up to Doha, we let the advocacy groups take the front lines on this issue. But Member States' failure to create a credible official review mechanism highlights the need for both advocacy and independent information when it comes to UNCAC implementation going forward.

Global Integrity will continue to provide locally researched, timely, peer-reviewed and entirely transparent scorecards of anti-corruption performance, alongside and complimentary to efforts like Transparency International's National Integrity Systems and the International Budget Partnership's Open Budget Index. Our work is not a perfect or complete solution, but we do think it’s helpful and has an impact. Reliable anti-corruption evaluation has historically come from empowered, independent civil society representing citizens, and the UNCAC monitoring agreement is not going to change that.

-- Nathaniel Heller & Global Integrity

Preview from The Corruption Notebooks 2009

2009-11-09T12:51:00.008-05:00

Each year Global Integrity published a series of essays on the practice of corruption as viewed from the bottom up. The stories are written by local journalists worldwide, one essay per country. The Corruption Notebooks is intended as a counterpoint to the heavy econometrics focus typical to the governance field (see today's announcement of the latest data mashup by the Millennium Challenge Corporation for a fine example of the dominance of the economists over other approaches to analysis).

You can read the 2006, 2007 and 2008 books here (free!) but below the jump we've got a preview from this year's stories.

This preview comes in the form of a presentation by our director Nathaniel Heller given to Corruption Forum 2009 at the University of Calgary.

If you want an email alert when the book is published, you can sign up here. The video runs some 30 minutes, so we won't be offended if you click over to read last year's book instead.

-- Jonathan Eyler-Werve

Join the 2009 Next Generation Philanthropy Forum

2009-11-06T16:09:00.018-05:00

Disclosure: Legatum is a funder of Global Integrity.

On Monday, the Legatum Institute is hosting an international event on the future of philanthropy. The day's panels are targeted at youth and how the rising generation can take advantage of current political, social and technological platforms to encourage philanthropy world-wide.

Global Integrity will be keeping tabs on the live feed from London throughout the day. With participants like Ushahidi, Geneva Global and (RED) Campaign, each of the panel discussions is not to be missed! We are especially looking forward to the Measuring Impact discussion (scheduled for 14.45- 1615 GMT).

Please see Legatum's website for more details on how to participate in Monday's forum.

-- Norah Malleny

Upcoming Release Event for the Latin America Local Governance Toolkit

2009-11-06T09:38:00.017-05:00

Please join us on November 16 at the National Endowment for Democracy, where Global Integrity's managing director, Nathaniel Heller, will present the Latin America Local Governance Toolkit. After months of collaboration and data collection with our local partners in Argentina, Ecuador and Peru, Global Integrity proudly released this first-of-its-kind assessment in September.

See below for more details on the toolkit and how to RSVP for the event.

Improving Local Governance in Latin America:
A Toolkit to Empower Civil Society Anti-Corruption Efforts

The Latin America Local Governance Toolkit assesses the existence, effectiveness, and citizen access to key governance mechanisms and anti-corruption safeguards at the sub-national level in three Latin American countries: Argentina, Ecuador and Peru. The indicators seek to measure accountability and transparency across the public sector, considering issues such as local public financial management and fiscal transfers, local civil service regulations and conflicts of interest safeguards, transparency around local state-owned enterprises, and the financing of local political parties and candidates. Generated through a collaborative partnership between Global Integrity, an international NGO that tracks governance and corruption trends, and local think tanks – CIPPEC (Argentina), Grupo FARO (Ecuador), and Ciudadanos al Día (Peru) – the Toolkit is being used by stakeholders in each country to design and advocate for evidence-based, sub-national governance and integrity reforms.

Join us for a discussion on the Toolkit’s methodology, results and local advocacy efforts on:

Monday, November 16, 2009; 3 – 5pm

1025 F St. NW, Suite 800, Washington D.C.
Coffee and empanadas will be served

• Nathaniel Heller, Managing Director, Global Integrity
• Miriam Kornblith, Director, Latin America and the Caribbean, National Endowment for Democracy
• Daniel Ritchie, Secretary, Partnership for Transparency Fund
• Leslie Harper, Modernization of the State Specialist, Inter-American Development Bank

RSVP (acceptances only) to aimelr@ned.org

Citizen- Government Partnerships to be the Theme of Anti-Corruption Conference

2009-11-05T10:00:00.002-05:00

Details for the next International Anti-Corruption Conference, a biennial event, have just been released. It looks like Global Integrity will be taking a trip to Thailand in November 2010!

Last year's International Anti-Corruption Conference in Athens focused on the need to create a mechanism to evaluate the effectiveness of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption. (Global Integrity's Jonathan Werve was there serving on metrics panel discussion.) Next week, the official UN project evaluation summit will consider adopting a review mechanism as recommended by the anti-corruption community. While many countries have signed the UNCAC agreement, very few have fully implemented its long list of conditions due to limited resources and/or limited political will.

In our work around the globe, UNCAC has often come up as a potential first step towards institutionalizing anti-corruption reforms. In our most recent dialogue workshop in the Solomon Islands, signing UNCAC was one of five recommendations mutually agreed upon by the participants. Global Integrity has found that when embarking on the UNCAC agenda, just like all other anti-corruption efforts, prioritization decisions must first be based on resources, political will and citizen demand.

Related to this, the theme of the upcoming International Anti-Corruption Conference is “Restoring trust: Global action for transparency”:

"To restore peoples’ trust and rebuild the credibility of institutions, governments must move beyond expressions of political will to concrete action; the private sector must put a check on bribery and fulfil their obligations as corporate citizens; and civil society must demand accountability.

Above all, there is an urgent need for all actors to work together towards a transparent and accountable global governance agenda."

We are looking forward to hearing experiences from a variety of anti-corruption practitioners when we all gather in Bangkok in 2010.

-- Norah Mallaney

Tracking Impact: Voies Nouvelles Presents Anti-Corruption Agenda to National Leaders in Cameroon

2009-11-04T09:00:00.004-05:00

Voies Nouvelles (one of the winners of the Global Integrity Impact Challenge) recently had the great opportunity to explain their organization's anti-corruption mission to select Ministers in their native Cameroon. The photo above shows the president of Voies Nouvelles speaking with the Minister of Secondary Education. In an email to Global Integrity, Voies Nouvelles told us how honored they felt to present their budget transparency agenda to top government officials. This conversation with the Minister only adds to the group's legacy of consultation with government officials, a key aspect of their series of regional-based budget oversight training workshops.

Congratulations to Voies Nouvelles!

-- Global Integrity

Global Integrity Scales With $2.4 Million Grant From Omidyar Network

2009-11-03T13:00:00.001-05:00

Friends, we have some exciting news to share with you. Global Integrity is partnering with Omidyar Network, which will be providing funding and expertise in support of our work to improve governance worldwide. This support will allow us to scale in ways that were previously out of reach.

This is a big moment for us. As always we are grateful to you, our supporters and staff worldwide, who use our information to create powerful, sustainable change. We're working for you.

Our media release is below; please forward and repost as appropriate.

-- Nathaniel Heller and Global Integrity

MEDIA RELEASE

Global Integrity Scales With $2.4 Million Grant From Omidyar Network

Omidyar Network’s Stacy Donohue Joins Board of Directors

November 3, 2009 – Global Integrity, a leader in the movement to bring greater transparency to government activities worldwide, announced today it has received a financial commitment of up to US$2.4 million from philanthropic investment firm Omidyar Network. Global Integrity has also appointed Stacy Donohue, who leads Omidyar Network’s U.S. government transparency investments, to Global Integrity’s Board of Directors.

Best-known for its anti-corruption and governance diagnostics, Global Integrity arms advocates, journalists and citizens with information to drive governance reforms. Omidyar Network’s grant will enable Global Integrity to accelerate its work on two critical fronts: develop the next generation of its online global fieldwork platform and launch a new research service for the investment community. Both initiatives will advance policy reforms globally.

"Global Integrity’s anti-corruption efforts ignite positive social change for millions of citizens worldwide,” said Stacy Donohue, Director, Omidyar Network. “Omidyar Network shares Global Integrity’s passion for driving government accountability through information transparency. We hope our grant will signal the importance of their work.”

Recognized for using technology to support public interest research and policy reforms, Global Integrity has used Web-based systems for its global fieldwork since 2002, in countries ranging from Iraq to Sudan to China. Omidyar Network’s grant will further enhance and expand the capabilities of this critical platform. Specifically, the online tool will allow local citizens, researchers, and journalists in more than 100 countries to gather data, analysis, and on-the-ground reporting of national and local government accountability and transparency issues.

“Few organizations stress the central importance of technology and market-based solutions to governance reform efforts; we’ve clearly found a likeminded partner in Omidyar Network,” said Nathaniel Heller, co-founder and Managing Director of Global Integrity. “Beyond generous financial support, a long-term relationship with Omidyar Network offers us invaluable technical and strategic counsel as we scale our offerings.”

Omidyar Network’s new funding will also support the formal launch of Foglamp (www.foglamp.org), a research service for investment clients in emerging and frontier markets. Foglamp offers clients a competitive advantage by delivering on-the-ground insights about investment-specific regulatory and market dynamics at the country, sector, and company levels. By so doing, Global Integrity aims to influence private capital flows as a way to stimulate policy reforms in these countries. Foglamp, already available to select clients, will be fully rolled out in early 2010.

About Omidyar Network

Omidyar Network is a philanthropic investment firm dedicated to harnessing the power of markets to create opportunity for people to improve their lives. Established in 2004 by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam, the organization invests in and helps scale innovative organizations to catalyze economic, social, and political change. To date, Omidyar Network has committed more than $300 million to for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations that foster economic advancement and encourage individual participation across multiple investment areas, including microfinance, property rights, government transparency, and social media. To learn more about Omidyar Network, please visit www.omidyar.com.

About Global Integrity

Global Integrity is a leading international non-profit organization that tracks governance and corruption trends around the world. Working with a network of several hundred in-country journalists and researchers in more than 100 countries, we aim to shape and inform the debate around governance and anti-corruption reforms through in-depth diagnostic tools at the national, sub-national, and sector levels. Our information is regularly used by aid donors, civil society advocates, businesses, and governments alike to press for governance reforms in both the developed and developing world. For more information about the organization, visit www.globalintegrity.org.

Yemeni Parliamentarians Draft a Right to Information Bill

2009-10-29T10:57:00.011-04:00

Yesterday, the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) and the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) teamed up to host an event on the increasing momentum for the right to information in many Arab nations. The panel mainly focused on the creation of draft FOI legislation in Yemen, although it did touch upon broader challenges to an individual’s right to information throughout the region.

At the table were two American lawyers (one being David McCraw from the New York Times) who have worked with groups in the region to help draft legislation on access to information. They were joined by three Yemeni former and current parliamentarians who, as members of the Parliamentarians Against Corruption (PAC), are responsible for the thinking and drive behind this new legislation.

Here are a few highlights from the presentation:

-- The Yemeni MPs said they felt as members of the legislative branch, they needed to push this initiative because the government rarely takes up the responsibility of protecting the rights of its citizens. This comment, aimed at their colleagues in the legislative branch as well as members of the executive, came off as quite candid in an otherwise politically sensitive discussion. When later asked what the chances of executive buy-in were for the FOI bill, the Yemenis all backed away from any criticism of the president.

-- One of the most contentious issues to be debated during writing sessions for the draft FOI revolved around the monitoring and implementation mechanism. Despite the concerns of international lawyers, the PAC decided that the head of the FOI oversight office would be appointed by the executive but there afterwards protected from removal. While it was not directly stated, this decision comes off as a compromise pre-empting executive-branch concerns over the opening of state documents.

-- Ali Ashal (a current PM and member of PAC) laid out many of the specifics of the FOI bill that now stands before in parliament. Under the current draft, all agencies, public or private, who receive any money from the government budget will be subject to the new regulations. Each of these agencies, departments or companies will have their own citizen request board where citizens can claim their right to information. Keeping with the tradition of civil service management in the Arab world, penalties are strictly laid out for every potential violation of the FOI process.

When asked about the level of collaboration the Yemen-based PAC has had with other groups in the region, only Kuwait was directly mentioned. This was surprising considering that Jordan is the only country in the Arab world where a legal right to information is in place. According to the Global Integrity Report: 2008, Jordanian citizens are able to claim their right to information within a reasonable time period and for only the cost of photocopying. However, our Jordanian researcher does draw attention to the government’s ability to hide many documents by classifying them as “secret” -- a legal weakness that the PAC of Yemen is working to avoid.

-- Norah Mallaney

Announcing Foglamp

2009-10-26T15:59:00.008-04:00

Global Integrity is proud to announce the formal launch of Foglamp, an initiative we have been working on for a number of years to provide real-time research and insights to the investment community on corruption and governance issues in countries around the world.

Historically, Global Integrity’s work (like most non-governmental organizations) was aimed at governments, civil society organizations, the media, and academia. While we’ve enjoyed tremendous success in reaching those key audiences, we’ve essentially ignored the 800-pound elephant in the room: the private sector and international investment community. Foglamp is our attempt to reach them directly.

As I wrote to the Global Integrity expert network this past summer:

Despite [Global Integrity’s] success, we have historically done little research or reporting on private sector corruption and governance issues. As we all know, private capital flows are increasingly important, especially to developing nations – many would argue they are now far more important to economic development than official development aid.

Those private capital and investment flows are also increasingly important to governments around the world, which hope to attract foreign investment by advertising how their countries offer functioning markets grounded in the rule of law. Those flows can, in my mind, serve as incredibly powerful incentives for governments to reform. As one of my colleagues describes it, many governments no longer care about a plane full of World Bank or IMF staff arriving at an airport. They care much more about the plane carrying investment bankers. I want to work together to influence those decision-makers so that governments have a greater incentive to respond to calls for reform.

This new initiative is based on a simple idea -- we want to make an impact on private investment flows around the world, alerting investors to countries and markets where governance and corruption risks are greater than expected as well as helping to steer investments towards undervalued opportunities. If we can help shift those capital flows by even one-tenth of one percent in just one market or region, the impact could be tremendous.

You can read much more about Foglamp projects and research on the Foglamp website, and if you’re interested in working with us on future Foglamp projects, please visit the site’s Work With Us page to fill out a simple online application form.

Your thoughts and suggestions on this new venture are welcome and valued.

-- Nathaniel Heller

World Bank Launches Data Portal for Actionable Governance Indicators

2009-10-26T13:57:00.004-04:00

Disclosure: The World Bank is a funder of Global Integrity.

The World Bank’s Actionable Governance Indicators Data Portal (AGI) is now available to the public and, while exploring the platform will definitely take a couple of days, we are excited about the possibilities it represents: a move away from simple name-and-shame rankings addressing fuzzy concepts and into the more practical insights provided by specific observations.

The portal comprises more than a thousand indicators from 12 data sources -- the Global Integrity Index among them -- and it offers customizable tools for comparative data analysis and display. The common thread amongst all of the source data on the portal is their emphasis on disaggregated, “actionable” indicators that offer more than just single-number rankings for countries on issues of governance and transparency. Actionable data is the difference between learning that “corruption is bad here” and instead learning that, say, cost barriers are preventing journalists from using a new access to information law.

Additional data sources include the non-governmental Open Budget Index; the World Bank’s Doing Business surveys; and the multi-donor Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) assessments, all of which are standouts in the field. This can all be easily linked up with our Global Integrity Index scores, now covering more than 100 countries, and exported. This is big step forward in the usability of our work, and exactly why we have made efforts to make our data as accessible as possible to outside users. Think of the portal as a giant mash-up machine.

The portal also has an interactive map for the user to combine indicators from several sources to get a snapshot of the quality of governance in any specific country, or to graphically demonstrate the progress of governance reform worldwide.

New data source: Public Accountability Mechanisms

The Public Accountability Mechanisms (PAM) data are also part of the site’s data library. PAM is a new collection of data generated by the World Bank assessing asset disclosure, conflicts of interest, freedom of information, immunity provisions, and ethics training laws. Currently, the PAM data only cover select countries but are expected to expand in the future. They are in many ways similar to some of the de jure Integrity Indicators you will find in our national-level toolkits assessing a country’s legal anti-corruption framework. We like them.

Our managing director, Nathaniel Heller, was a panelist at the launch event on October 22nd at the Bank and noted that: “Today arguably marks a watershed in the history of governance indicators: the end of the era of single-number, name-and-shame country rankings.”

Also participating in the discussion were top World Bank governance experts, including Ritva Reinikka, Director of the Bank’s Middle East and North Africa Social and Economic Division who pioneered some of the earliest Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys (PETS) in Uganda more than a decade ago.

All in all, we highly recommend the AGI portal. It’s a great way to mash-up some of the best and most current actionable indicators out there in an easy-to-use, web-friendly format.

Bookmark your browser now: http://www.agidata.org.

-- Hazel Feigenblatt and Global Integrity

Kenya: Citizen Report Cards Push Reforms in Water and Sanitation

2009-10-22T15:19:00.009-04:00

In a previous post we reported on how Kenyan citizens conducted social audits to oversee the distribution of discretionary funds intended for community projects. This post looks at how citizen engagement in Kenya has helped to improve quality in water provision through citizen watchdogs called Water Action Groups. These are a spinoff of the Citizen Report Card project, a tool that assesses service provision in water and sanitation.

I saw Rosemary Rop of the World Bank's Water and Sanitation Program present lessons from this project this Tuesday in Washington. Her presentation was part of the World Bank’s Demand for Good Governance speaker series.

The Citizen Report Card provides evidence-based data which deepens the understanding of the underlying issues, and links policy makers, citizens and service providers. This tool is survey-based with systematic feedback from users (mainly data on consumers’ perceptions). The data was collected for Kenya’s three largest cities: Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu using local civil society groups partnering with the World Bank Institute.

The data gathered helped develop programs to address the salient issues, called Action Plans. The results were used to carry out informed dialogue for improvement of services. Rop mentioned the Citizen Report Card has given citizens the ability to inquire about progress on the “Action Plan” and thus track their progress. Citizens became organized into “Water Action Groups” that conducted the Action Plan Reviews.

Eventually the Kenyan Water Services Regulatory Board started to institutionalize the citizen feedback process. This led to the creation of a national level umbrella CSO network, Kenya’s Water and Sanitation CSO’s Network (KEWASNET) to monitor governance issues in this sector and to engage policy makers and experts in this issue.

Clear information on progress + grassroots organizing = accountability. We like it.

Have water and sanitation services improved in Kenya? Rop says they have, although the Citizen Report Card is just one element of the solution. As mentioned at the event, capacity building is a long process and reforms take time to be fully implemented.

More from Rosemary Rop on the linkage between accountability and service delivery here. More on accountability in Kenya in the Global Integrity Report: Kenya.

-- Renato Busquets

-- image: Curt Carnemark / World Bank (cc by/nc/sa)

Documentary: "It's Our Money. Where's It Gone?"

2009-10-20T10:26:00.017-04:00

Each year in Kenya, all 210 members of Parliament get roughly US$1 million each to distribute to community projects as they see fit. Where does the money really go? Citizen groups in Kenya are fighting to find out.

Our friends at the International Budget Partnership (IBP) have produced a documentary which highlights the ways in which citizens can impact budget-making by overseeing the distribution of funds through social audits. The documentary follows a monitoring group in Kenya but we think the story includes lessons that apply beyond Mombasa.

From the International Budget Partnership's Press Release:

The International Budget Partnership has released "It's Our Money. Where's It Gone?" -a new documentary film on the work its partner, MUHURI (Muslims for Human Rights), is doing to involve communities directly in monitoring the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) in Mombasa, Kenya. The CDF allocates approximately one million dollars annually to each member of parliament to spend on development projects in his or her constituency but provides for no meaningful independent oversight. This is the story of ordinary Kenyans stepping in to do something about it.

The documentary shows how MUHURI uses "Social Audits" (a process developed in India, principally by the MKSS) to involve communities in monitoring and holding their government accountable for managing the public's money and meeting the needs of its people, especially the poor and most vulnerable.

This is not a Kenya-specific problem. This story is familiar to Washington D.C. residents, where city council members distribute public funds to nonprofits and community groups with similarly low levels of oversight. IBP's documentary reinforces the need to distance legislators from unmonitored public social spending and the vital role citizens must play in this process.

You can read more about the Washington City Paper's tracking of the District's funds on a previous post to the Commons.

-- Norah Mallaney

Twitter is Weird

2009-10-15T16:44:00.004-04:00

We got an inevitably short reply to the post below from Professor Lessig via Twitter, which I'll repost here mainly as a demonstration of how surreal policy debate feels when done in six word bursts.

I wrote on twitter, linking to my critique of his essay "Against Transparency": "@lessig says the US open gov movement has grown too powerful & may have gone too far. We disagree: http://bit.ly/27C3q "

Lessig replies and rebroadcasts our summary (but drops the link to the post explaining our position): "wow. did @lessig really say that? RT @GlobalIntegrity: @lessig says the US open gov movement has grown too powerful"

I reply: "@lessig u say "Like the decision to go to war in Iraq, transparency has become an unquestionable bipartisan value." Not flattering (or true)"

I reply further "@lessig Thx for RT but you cut link to explanation http://bit.ly/27C3q which isn't very sporting."

I can't decide if I should be delighted that we have this channel to engage in debate, or dismayed at the context-free nature of it. Maybe both?

You can ambivalently follow our Twitter feed here: @globalintegrity.

-- Jonathan Eyler-Werve

Lawrence Lessig, Against Transparency. We're Not

2009-10-14T13:29:00.014-04:00

Lawrence Lessig, a seemingly reliable advocate for open information, has written a bizarre piece entitled “Against Transparency: The perils of openness in government.” He claims that the US open government movement has grown too powerful and may have gone too far. It goes downhill from there.

First, the piece is here: Against Transparency

Second: A rebuttal from our friends at the Sunlight Foundation, where Lessig is (for now) on an advisory board. (Note to self: talk to advisory board about not penning off-message opinion pieces. -- Ed)

Our take...

Lessig has some valid points, which we’ll discuss below. Unfortunately, they are buried in a 6,500 word discourse that tacks from government data in one paragraph to copyright protections the next. Lessig acknowledges “ the good that transparency creates in a wide range of contexts, government especially.” But he also says, “I have increasingly come to worry that there is an error at the core of this unquestioned goodness. We are not thinking critically enough about where and when transparency works, and where and when it may lead to confusion, or to worse.”

OK, maybe. Let’s go down the list of his examples.

Lessig writes: “a campaign to get members of Congress to post their daily calendars on the Internet… there were too many legitimate reasons why someone might not want his or her ‘daily official work schedule’ available to anyone with an Internet connection.”

Security concerns: we get it. Global Integrity has talked with the government of Guatemala about this very issue, and in that context (where people end up dead on the streets because of their political views), there are very real concerns over assassination and kidnap via schedule data. The US Congress? Not so much. Members of Congress do a lot of scheduled events already, apparently without incident. Their campaigns are full of them.

But the point of posting a Member’s schedule is not to know their location; it’s to know what they spend their time on and with who they spend it. These are things that can be posted with no security risk at all: a list of meetings, their length, who was there, what was discussed. Alphabetize it and post it after a week’s delay -- security problem solved.

Lessig writes, “Like the decision to go to war in Iraq, transparency has become an unquestionable bipartisan value.”

Wow. The decision to go to war in Iraq remains obviously controversial, and drew hundreds of thousands of people to anti-war protests before the war even began. The open government movement, laboring in obscurity over data formats and FOIA processes, has very little in common with this. Actually, we’re not sure if it has anything to do with it.

In Washington, transparency is far from “unquestionable.” While the Obama administration has proven mildly enthusiastic over the release of government databases, it is conspicuously less so on old fashioned access to information regarding the administration itself.

“A lot of us have been disappointed and confused,” said Anne L. Weisman, chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in an interview with Global Integrity this summer. “Some of the attitudes are mimicking the anti-transparency attitudes of the Bush Administration.” Particularly at the Justice Department, she says, “This is a culture that has not changed in many ways.” (We examine transparency under Obama at length in the upcoming Global Integrity Report: 2009.)

Lessig is concerned that campaign finance datasets are more suggestive than definitive as proof of corruption: “Where a member of Congress acts in a way inconsistent with his principles or his constituents, but consistent with a significant contribution, that act at least raises a question about the integrity of the decision. But beyond a question, the data says little else.”

Have you read All the President’s Men? Knowing what questions to ask is huge. It’s almost everything. You ask the right questions, you start getting answers, and you piece it together a little at a time. That’s how investigative journalism works.

Lessig: “But will not this supposed salience of money… simply inspire more debate about whether in fact money buys results in Congress?... This is the problem of attention-span.”

Lessig suggests that lots of data will spread the pernicious but unsupported claim that politicians are bought and sold by campaign donors (to think!). But a number of studies have used campaign finance data to demonstrate exactly the opposite, or to show that raising lots of money doesn’t have that much effect on winning elections. We can debate these studies, but the point is that we’re starting with hard evidence and having a rational discussion grounded in facts. That’s much better than any information-poor alternative.

Lessig quotes: “Surveillance cameras followed the attractive young blond woman through the lobby of the midtown Manhattan hotel, kept a glassy eye on her as she rode the elevator up to the 23rd floor and peered discreetly down the hall as she knocked at the door to my room… As a matter of fact, she is my daughter.”

Scary story: pretty blond, creepy camera, vindicated parent. But this is victim fantasy nonsense. Any media outlet that ran with an affair story this easily disproved would be turned into a smoking hole in the ground by a libel suit. There are rules and enforcement mechanisms already in place that mediate public information. And what does this oddly breathy vignette have to do with government transparency?

Back on topic, Lessig looks at what conflict-of-interest disclosure did to the field of medical publishing.“Like most journals in medicine, JAMA required disclosure, and was among the most aggressive in the extent and the reach of the disclosures required. But as attention to disclosure grew in the medical field, the failure to disclose adequately has become a serious charge. Omission is now a serious commission.”

Lessig argues that partially informed accusations over whether doctors fully disclosed their industry connections are somehow worse than entirely uninformed accusations over whether doctors have hidden industry connections. But I’ll concede the point! Let’s just fix it.

If there’s contention over disclosures and unfair tainting of doctors that fail to completely disclose, let’s take it out of their hands. Switch the disclosure system to a big common database where the medical industry reports contracting relationships with doctors, much as foreign lobbyists already do. Doctors can go on publishing at will, disclosing nothing, because their business relationships (already highly regulated) are now public. No half-disclosure, no unfair accusations. [While factchecking this piece, we learned this is sometimes already happening].

Is it ever that easy? Probably not. But the point is that these issues are entirely soluble. We work on this stuff every day.

The wrapup…

At this point in “Against Transparency” Lessig returns to ground he knows well: copyright law and file sharing. His vocal advocacy on these topics made him a hero to tech geeks and legal wonks alike, and he’s much more persuasive here.

From there we get a stirring defense of full public financing of political campaign, but are then whipsawed back to Lessig’s worries over the use of the word “fair” in the titles of legislation causing them to be overturned. Or something. When did Laurence Lessig, co-inventor of the Creative Commons license used on this site and widely respected political activist, turn into a concern troll?

Here’s where we agree with Lessig: Analysis of data is every bit as essential as access to data. And bad political metrics can take on a life of their own (we wrote an entire book about this phenomenon). But bad analysis doesn’t stop when information is scarce; it just gets dumber and louder. Clamping down the information isn’t a solution, because it doesn’t address the real danger in an opaque government: it’s not that information is gone. It’s that information becomes the privileged possession of a powerful few to use or misuse as they please.

We also agree with Lessig that transparency in public life must be balanced against privacy in private life, even for elected officials.

But our researchers in more than one hundred countries worldwide have told us again and again that the barrier to the success of “open information” regimes isn’t the technical concerns. It is the lack of political will to implement them at all. Which makes “Against Transparency” all the more weird, and all the more irrelevant to the real work ahead of us.

-- Jonathan Eyler-Werve
-- Image by Robert Scoble (cc by)

We Are Global: Corruption Programs on Community-Based Radio Enhance Citizen Debate in Kenya

2009-10-12T08:00:00.019-04:00

"We Are Global" is a new series on the Commons featuring interviews with Global Integrity's far flung staff of journalists, researchers and advocates. This series will highlight our colleagues' work "in the trenches" as they pursue anti-corruption reforms in their communities.

What's the power of one voice? And what's the power of one voice with a radio station? Grace Githaiga is finding out.

Corruption is commonly publicized in Kenya with fraud, bribery and waste constantly front and center in newspaper spreads. While the cycle of corruption doesn’t seem to be slowing, the Kenyan public has recently shown increasing levels of intolerance for political elitism. In June, President Mwai Kibaki announced a cap on the vehicle allowances granted to senior government officials after continued public outrage over politicians driving state-purchased Mercedes. Last month, the Kenyan parliament voted to remove Aaron Ringera, the head of the anti-corruption commission, from office due to public frustration with the commission’s low prosecution rate. Many Kenyans are asking, “Why haven’t any “big fish” been caught?”

Corruption issues are not only being debated in the Opinion and Editorial sections of newspapers like The Nation but also on community radio broadcasts. Last month, I spoke with Grace Githaiga, a Global Integrity collaborator working on the upcoming Global Integrity Report: Kenya. Meanwhile, Grace's work with EcoNews Africa has helped bring community-radio shows to new prominence in Kenya.

Kenyan media's rising third sector

Grace spoke with pride of her involvement with community-based radio, a newcomer to the field of media in Kenya. The first community-based radio station was established in 2004 by a group of rural women aided by EcoNews Africa. The organization’s concept is that community-based radio stations provide, as Grace put it, “an enabling environment” through which under-resourced communities can share what education and tools they have. EcoNews describes their relationships with local stations as “partnerships” to recognize that the community members themselves drive much of the decision-making process. While the community members dictate programming content and manage the station, EcoNews Africa advocates for funding for their eight partner stations. In 2008, EcoNews won national-level recognition through legislation that identified community-based radio as a third and distinct media sector in the country. Grace sees this as a first step towards the continued expansion of community-based radio stations across Kenya.

Grace lists agriculture, nutrition, health and corruption as the top programming topics at EcoNews’ partner stations. Kenyans see corruption impacting their lives in just as fundamental a way as HIV/AIDS or innovations in farming techniques. Although many of the corruption-focused programs center around the local manifestations of corruption, they are not limited to reports of petty corruption such as police bribery—macro-level resource distribution debates and national corruption scandals are discussed just as frequently.

"Things that are not going right in the community"

The strength of these programs comes from their accessibility to the public, says Grace. The abundance of cell phones and radios, even in small villages in Kenya, makes it easy for all community members (farmers, police officers, politicians) to both call in and listen to the shows. Grace says that many of the community-based radio stations have even coordinated informal types of social audits. While these “audits” are not carried out in any standardized way, the station has been able to successfully collect stories of resource mismanagement which have then be reported to authorities. For example, one corruption program based out of a Nairobi slum is called (roughly-translated) “Things that are not going right in the community.” This year, after callers complained that people were siphoning electricity from newly installed street lights in their township, the police were sent in to cut the illegal cables and protect the new lights.

Grace also attributes the success of these local corruption programs to their ability to be independent of direct political influence. Grace claims that in the commercial radio sphere, political influence and censorship are common. (See the Global Integrity Report: 2008 for more on Kenyan press freedom.) Because community-based radio stations are shielded from any direct political influence, they can typically voice more direct commentary.

This week, former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan publicly criticized Kenyan leaders for dragging their feet when it comes to institutionalizing accountability reforms. He called on the Kenyan public to be vigilant in their calls for change, saying: ‘When leaders fail to lead, sometimes we have to make them follow.” Community-based radio could provide an ideal forum for increasing the Kenyan public’s push-back against political elitism. While the stations’ potential for national-level penetration is still unknown, the successful campaign to increase street-lamp reliability provides just one example of their undeniable impact.

-- Norah Mallaney
-- Images courtesy of Grace Githaiga, pictured above.

The Links Between Corruption and Peacebuilding

2009-10-08T14:00:00.003-04:00

Corruption’s role in armed conflict and violence has become a key concern for peacebuilding professionals. And yet, the anti-corruption and peacebuilding fields have rarely converged in a systematic way. One effort towards bringing the two communities into an engaged dialogue is the recent publication of a special theme issue of the journal New Routes on the “nexus between corruption and peacebuilding” published by the Life and Peace Institute based in Sweden (the entire issue is available for free download).

Articles range from how grand corruption in Colombia weakens the government’s efforts to eliminate criminal networks to corruption in the military. The issue also includes contributions that focus on practical, actionable strategies and toolkits. Global Integrity was happy to contribute a piece that outlined some core concepts in corruption analysis as well as suggestions of anti-corruption tools that might be appropriate to post-conflict settings.

In a related vein, we’re also happy to help spread the word about a new anti-corruption e-list service established by Tufts University’s Fletcher School that is focused on corruption and anti-corruption in development and conflict/post-conflict contexts. To quote the founders of the new e-mail listserv:

The purpose of the list is to build an active online learning community of professionals and scholars working on anti-corruption and integrity initiatives with an explicit emphasis on developing and conflict/post-conflict countries. The list will be used to:
Highlight new publications and research

Share job announcements

Announce academic programs, colloquia, conferences, workshops, etc. relevant to anti-corruption in development and conflict/post-conflict contexts

Support research endeavors into anti-corruption and integrity

Exchange ideas, advice and questions

To subscribe, go to this page and click on "Subscribe" at the left of the page.

-- Raymond June

Notes from the Chamber of Commerce: Let’s Get Smarter About Corporate Social Responsibility

2009-10-08T09:00:00.003-04:00

The role of business is changing. That was the take home message from last week’s Emerging Market Development conference, sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Recent emphasis on “corporate social responsibility” has pushed businesses to wade into pools that would have been completely foreign to managers a decade ago. The conference sought to guide this transition by bringing together businesses, government aid donors and non-profits to assess how multinationals can engage constructively with small but growing markets around the world.

The refrain of the day was that the private sector plays a crucial role in development. Over and over again, corporate representatives stated that like it or not, their businesses are drivers of development. In coming to terms with this reality, members of the private sector have added “corporate social responsibility” into their agendas. This requires corporations to look at international investments from a more encompassing stand-point, rather than a simply fiscal one.

Better information through better partnerships...

Last week, corporate representatives spoke of the need for more holistic information on market environments so they can fulfill their newly understood development role. This information must go beyond charting of business climate to include political climate, service delivery and human rights concerns. The Business Civic Leadership Center and Corporate Citizenship presented one solution to this information gap-- linking corporations with international development agencies. These types of public-private partnerships allow for a sharing of understand localized climates and have on-the-ground experience from both representatives.

While gaining knowledge from international government agencies is crucial for businesses entering emerging markets, today’s panelists also spoke of a need for commitments within the markets’ local communities. Many of the success stories shared were rooted in a company’s ability to identify a local group to sustain both their business and philanthropic ventures.

The conference made it clear that the development power of business will only be improved by increasing the dialogue between the typically segregated private, public and independent actors in the international field. Each group brings unique “lessons-learned” to the dialogue and nuanced perceptions of how international relations work. Sharing this information can take “corporate social responsibility” from a tossed-around, feel-good phrase, into increasingly positive development programs rooted in emerging markets.

Meanwhile at the Chamber...

These issues aren't easy, particularly when development issues collide with traditional business interests. For instance, the US Chamber of Commerce is facing internal dispute over how best to approach pending climate change legislation. The Chamber runs what is by far the US's biggest lobbying operation, and plans to aggressively oppose climate legislation, in part by demanding the EPA put "the science of climate change on trial". In response, Apple, Nike and others walked out of the organization or its leadership posts. Corporate social responsibility remains buzzword of the day, but conflicts between economic and social interests remain far from resolved.

-- Norah Mallaney

Journalist Attacked in Kuwait

2009-10-07T18:03:00.015-04:00

Reuters is reporting that Kuwaiti journalist Zayed al-Zaid was physically attacked and wounded after leaving a transparency summit earlier this week. (Global Integrity later was told Zaid had actually been at headquarters of a political movement prior to the attack.) Zaid is the editor of an online news source known for its corruption-focused investigative reporting and at least one of his colleagues is assuming the attack was politically motivated. While Global Integrity’s Kuwaiti reporter, Salwa Al-Saeed says it’s premature to jump to conclusions, she is concerned with the impact this incident could have on the potential for investigative journalism in her country.

Earlier today, we were able to speak with reporter Salwa Al-Saeed, a contributor to the 2008 Corruption Notebooks as well as a friend and former colleague of Zaid. Salwa confirmed that Zaid was known for “bringing corruption stories to the public.” Recently, he had been working on a story investigating levels of discretion in the awarding of government contracts to private-sector electricity providers.

Salwa was reluctant to point any fingers for the attack saying the investigation by the Ministry of the Interior is underway. She did tell us that the Prime Minister had visited Zaid in the hospital. Salwa saw this to be a “good sign.” Hopefully it marks true political commitment to the investigation.

Based on the Global Integrity Report: 2008, the police are known to be heavily influenced by politicians and therefore a top-political ally could speed-up the investigation (or taint it). As Salwa concedes, it is too soon to tell, but this case might provide a watershed moment for press freedom and journalist protection in Kuwait.

Global advocates the Committee to Protect Journalists and Amnesty International have not yet produced reports on this particular incident, but watch their websites for more details as the investigation progresses.

-- Norah Mallaney

Internal Transparency: Our 2008 Tax Return

2009-10-07T16:13:00.002-04:00

As promised in a previous post, you can now access Global Integrity's 2008 federal tax return ("Form 990") on our Funders & Financials page.

-- Nathaniel Heller

Kick-off Seminar for the Latin America Local Governance Toolkit

2009-10-06T15:10:00.011-04:00

Lea la versión en español abajo.

An all-day seminar entitled “The promotion of a reform agenda for the institutional quality at the level sub-national: the experience of Argentina, Peru and Ecuador,” held Wednesday September 30th, marked the official release of the most recent project of Global Integrity’s Local Integrity Initiative, in which in-country partner groups carried out original research in the three South American countries to assess the existence and effectiveness of sub-national anti-corruption mechanisms. The event was organized by the Centro de Implementación de Políticas Públicas para la Equidad y el Crecimiento (CIPPEC) in Buenos Aires, our project partner in Argentina. Participants located in Lima, Quito and Washington DC participated via videoconference.

The first panel centered on how to tackle the issue of measuring governance at the sub-national level and included remarks from Global Integrity’s Nathaniel Heller and CIPPEC’s Fernando Straface (you can read Global Integrity’s comments (in Spanish) on the Local Integrity Initiative site). The second panel included representatives of the three local partner groups in this project (CIPPEC, Grupo FARO in Ecuador, and Ciudadanos al Día in Peru) each of whom presented selected results from their respective countries. Their discussion also focused on challenges that each group faced in carrying out this intense and complicated fieldwork. María Page of CIPPEC commented that in Argentina they sought, wherever possible, to select local researchers located within the province that was being assessed. Grupo FARO spoke about several recent changes in the law in Ecuador (thanks to the adoption of a new Constitution) which created unexpected challenges for assessing Ecuador’s legal anti-corruption framework. Caroline Gibu of Ciudadanos al Día noted that in Peru the regions are a relatively recent administrative division and therefore have not yet assumed all of the functions that are stipulated in the law. Another challenge that researchers in Peru faced was the reluctance of public officials to participate as interviewees.

One of the objectives of this project was to utilize the resultant data to design and implement an evidence-based advocacy and outreach campaign in each country. As such, government policy makers were invited to participate in a third panel: two from Argentina (one from the province of Santa Fe, another from the province of Buenos Aires) and one from the municipality of Quito in Ecuador. Both officials from Argentina mentioned that the Right to Public Information law is a key ingredient in their province’s anti-corruption architecture. According to the participant from the Province of Buenos Aires, in 2008 the provincial government began discussions with a number of NGOs on possible modifications to the aforementioned law. Among the measures that came up as possible improvements were the training of the provincial public administration on citizens’ right to government information, the creation of a special right to information office, and the need to be transparent and consistent in the gathering of information within the provincial administration itself.

The participant from Santa Fe mentioned that the provincial government has sought political reform as a means for improving governance and transparency writ large. Among the stated objectives of the current government is the elimination of the patronage system and clientelism within the Santa Fe civil service. That is why training and a competitive recruitment process in the civil service are included in the new policies, issues addressed in the Santa Fe scorecard generated as part of this project.

The representative of the government of Quito emphasized that Ecuadorian law mandates that civic participation be included as a part of the policymaking process; it is in fact a constitutional requirement. He emphasized that the local (municipal) governments have an important role to play, given that some years ago in Ecuador, citizens responded in a poll that they were pessimistic about their nation but were optimistic about their own municipalities. Nevertheless, this panelist was critical of how the decentralization process has been conducted in Ecuador, since the actual capacity of municipalities has rarely matched the responsibilities assigned to them. He argued that, “decentralization should be a centralized process”, where the responsibilities devolved to sub-national government units should be determined by the central government, taking into account local capacity.

One of the most important issued broached in this panel, and possibly the seminar more generally, is how to overcome the hurdles that arise when trying to pass reforms that many recognize as necessary at the sub-national level in each country (how to actually implement the reforms). This seminar was just the first step in an advocacy and outreach campaign in the three countries that will attempt do just that (you can follow the campaign here). Global Integrity and CIPPEC will be helping to organize additional events in Washington DC to share results with the multilateral development community (read: donors), while the three local partner groups have already begun quiet dialogues with select local governments in each country to discuss possible reform priorities.

-- Renato Busquets

####

En Español:

El seminario titulado “La promoción de una agenda de reforma para la calidad institucional en el nivel subnacional. La experiencia de Argentina, Perú y Ecuador” que tuvo lugar el pasado 30 de septiembre en Buenos Aires, Argentina, fue el evento que marcó el lanzamiento oficial del más reciente proyecto de la Iniciativa de Integridad Local, que en esta ocasión se realizó de manera simultánea en estos tres países sudamericanos, el estudio evalúa la existencia y eficacia de mecanismos subnacionales para prevenir la corrupción.
El evento fue organizado por el Centro de Implementación de Políticas Públicas para la Equidad y el Crecimiento (CIPPEC), uno de nuestros socios en este proyecto. Mediante videoconferencia se pudo contar con la participación de expositores situados en Lima, Quito y Washington DC.

En el primer panel se discutió como afrontar la cuestión de medir la gobernabilidad e integridad pública a nivel subnacional, éste contó con la participación de Nathaniel Heller de Global Integrity (aquí puede leer los comentarios de Global Integrity) y Fernando Straface de CIPPEC. En el segundo panel participaron los representantes de las tres organizaciones locales (CIPPEC, Grupo FARO, y Ciudadanos al Día) que fueron los coordinadores en sus respectivos países. Se presentaron algunos resultados, y también se habló del intenso trabajo, los retos y complicaciones que enfrentaron en el trabajo de campo. María Page de CIPPEC comentó que en Argentina se buscó un enfoque de “Apropiación Local” en los investigadores, es decir que en la medida de lo posible se seleccionaron investigadores que estuvieran localizados dentro de la provincia estudiada.
Grupo FARO hizo mención de que recientemente en Ecuador hay muchos cambios en la ley (gracias a la adopción de una nueva Constitución) lo cual creó retos inesperados en el análisis de su marco legal; se buscó interpretar los resultados en este nuevo contexto. Caroline Gibu de Ciudadanos al Día, mencionó que en Perú las regiones son una división administrativa relativamente reciente y que por ende todavía no han asumido todas las funciones estipuladas en la ley. Otro reto que enfrentaron en Perú fue la reticencia de los funcionarios públicos a ser entrevistados para ser utilizados como fuentes en este estudio.

Uno de los propósitos de este estudio es utilizar la información resultante del estudio para diseñar e implementar una campaña de incidencias en las políticas públicas dentro de cada país. Consecuentemente se invitaron a participar en el tercer panel a tomadores de decisiones: dos de Argentina (uno de la provincia de Santa Fe, y otro de la provincia de Buenos Aires), y uno del municipio de Quito en Ecuador. Ambos funcionarios de Argentina mencionaron que la ley de Acceso a Información Pública es un elemento clave en la estrategia de su provincia para mejorar el buen gobierno. Según lo que se expuso, en 2008 el gobierno de la Provincia de Buenos Aires tuvo una discusión con algunas ONGs sobre posibles modificaciones a la ley de Acceso a la Información Pública. Entre las medidas que se comentaron comos posibles soluciones (y que el gobierno de la provincia de Buenos Aires buscó implementar) son la capacitación de la administración pública provincial en cuanto a este tema, la creación de una oficina especial, y buscar transparentar y ser consistente en como se recauda la información dentro de la misma administración provincial.

La participante de Santa Fe mencionó que el gobierno provincial ha buscado una reforma política en esa provincia para mejorar la integridad pública y transparencia en términos generales. Entre los objetivos que tiene el gobierno actual es desterrar el clientelismo y prebendarismo. Por eso se han implementado políticas de ingreso por concurso y capacitación dentro del servicio civil, estas cuestiones fueron incluidas en la ficha de resultados como parte de este proyecto.

El representante del gobierno de Quito enfatizó que la ley ecuatoriana exige la participación ciudadana, es en si una exigencia constitucional; en la planificación del gobierno debe ser incorporada la participación ciudadana. Enfatizó que los gobiernos locales (municipales) tienen un importante papel que cumplir dado que, en un sondeo de hace unos años en Ecuador, los ciudadanos contestaban que veían con buena perspectiva a su municipio y con una perspectiva pesimista a la nación. Sin embargo, este panelista fue crítico de cómo se ha llevado el proceso en el Ecuador, pues ha habido discrepancias entre competencias y capacidades en los municipios, no hay congruencia. Por eso es que él afirma que la “descentralización debe ser un proceso centralizado”, es decir las competencias que se atribuyen a las entidades subnacionales deben ser determinadas por el gobierno central tomando en cuenta sus capacidades.

Una de las preguntas más importantes en este panel, y posiblemente del seminario, es cómo sobreponer los obstáculos para poder alcanzar las reformas propuestas. Este seminario es apenas el primer paso en la campaña de incidencia en estos tres países (puede seguir la campaña aquí). Global Integrity y CIPPEC ayudarán en la organización de eventos adicionales en Washington DC para compartir los resultados con la comunidad de los profesionales del desarrollo internacional, mientras que los tres grupos locales ya han comenzado a entablar diálogos con un secreto grupo de gobiernos locales en cada país para discutir posibles reformas.

-- Renato Busquets