Tag Archives: training

Guest Post: ChatGPT in Anticorruption Research–You Cannot Make This Up!

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Today’s guest post is from Dieter Zinnbauer of the Copenhagen Business School’s Sustainability Center:

Jim Anderson over at the World Bank blog and Matthew Stephenson on this blog kicked of an interesting discussion about how the new era of artificial intelligence—particularly the natural language chat-bots like OpenAI’s revolutionary ChatGPT—will affect the anticorruption field. As Matthew suggested, the ability of ChatGPT to generate plausible-sounding (if a bit bland) summaries and speeches on corruption-related topics should inspire all of us real humans to aim to do more creative and original—and less bot-like—writing and speaking on anticorruption topics. And both Jim and Matthew suggested that in this field, as in many others, ChatGPT can also be a valuable aid for researchers and advocates, performing in seconds research and drafting work that might take a human being several hours.

Yet while ChatGPT may be able to assist in some tasks, we shouldn’t get too excited about it just yet, especially when it comes to research. Some of its limits as a research tool are already well known and widely discussed. But I wanted to call attention to another problem, based on a couple of recent experiences I had trying to use ChatGPT as a research aid. Continue reading →

What to Study in a Corruption Studies Program: Comments & Information Please

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Despite Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s attempt to paint Ukraine as a cesspool of corruption to advance his client’s reelection, media reports (here and here) and assessments by the IMF and the World Bank show the country making steady progress in bringing corruption to heal. One especially promising sign is the large number of university students and mid-career professionals studying how to combat corruption. Last September Ukraine’s Anticorruption Research and Education Center (ACREC) partnered with the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, the nation’s oldest institution of higher learning, to offer a degree in corruption studies for students and a certificate for civil servants, business executives, and others in the workforce needing to know more about the topic to better do their job. Classrooms are bulging, and plans are being made to expand the number of courses.

The Ukraine program sparked the interest of other Eurasian nations in starting similar programs, and in January representatives of non-governmental organizations and universities from Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Moldova met in Kyiv to learn from ACREC’s experience. Topics included whether to concentrate on students or mid-career professionals, whether, as in Ukraine, a program should be offered by a partnership between an NGO and a university, and the pros and cons of charging tuition versus seeking a grant from the government or a donor agency.

I spoke about what to teach. As the notes from my talk show, my bias is towards a heavily academic curricula, one that stresses analytical tools that prepare students to tackle a range of public policy issues. That is not the only way to teach about corruption, and indeed my friend Alan Doig has argued for a different focus.

I had planned to compare my proposed corruption studies curricula with those offered by universities and other institutions across the globe, but surprisingly little is readily available on the web.  A 2013 U4 Anticorruption Resource Centre study catalogued the courses and degree programs then offered but contains little on what is taught and many of the links to the programs are dead.  The only substantial description of a curricula I found was that of the International Anticorruption Academy, which has offered a Masters-level program in corruption studies since 2012 along with individual courses on specialized topics. (Full disclosure: one of which on local government I have taught on occasion.)

If we want more effective anticorruption policies and better implementation of those policies, we need policymakers, policy advisors, administrators, lawyers and business executives with a deep understanding of corruption and how to combat it. There is no one curricula or course that will meet everyone’s needs.  The more the global anticorruption community knows about what has been taught and what has been learned about teaching corruption, the better.  Readers with thoughts on what students and anticorruption practitioners should learn, with course syllabi, information on degree or certificate programs, and experience in or techniques for teaching about corruption are invited to share their knowledge with the GAB community.

Lessons of Moral Psychology for Anticorruption Strategy

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Most countries attempt to fight public corruption through policies that increase the magnitude and the probability of punishment, on the logic that rational individuals will be deterred from engaging in corrupt acts if the expected costs exceed the expected benefits. This approach is certainly valuable, but it is incomplete, and anticorruption strategies based exclusively on a view of potentially corrupt public officials as “rational actors” are unlikely to be fully effective. This is because human beings are not (only) rational animals, they are also moral animals: As already discussed on this blog (see here and here), the decision-making process of a potentially corrupt public official is influenced not only by her calculation of expected (material) costs and benefits, but also by her moral values and self-image.

In fact, when people act in accordance with their own moral standards, their brain-reward centers are activated, which may explain why individuals value honesty and desire to live ethically at their own eyes. Notwithstanding, even otherwise morally upright subjects can engage in corruption. What do individuals take into account when choosing whether to engage in profitable dishonesty or to maintain their positive self-image by adhering to their moral standards?

A growing stream of research on moral psychology and neuroscience has shown that individuals employ certain psychological mechanisms, such as rationalization, that enable them to cheat at a certain level without considering themselves as “cheaters”; this, in turn, allows them to benefit from the dishonest behavior while not damaging their positive self-image. But when it becomes more difficult for people to justify their unethical behavior to themselves, the likelihood that they will engage in dishonest behavior will decrease. The tendency to engage in dishonest behavior is also affected by individuals’ ability to exercise self-control when facing temptation — that is, by their capacity to subdue their desire to attain short-term benefits in order to achieve long-term goals.

Greater attention to these insights would make possible the design of anticorruption policies tailored both to inhibit the use of rationalizations and to encourage the exertion of self-control when individuals face the opportunity to act dishonestly. For example, public agencies (especially those in corruption-prone sectors like public procurement) could take the following steps:  Continue reading →

Course on Anticorruption in Local Government July 10 – 14, 2017

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The International Anticorruption Academy will offer a course this July 10 – 14 on combating corruption in local government.  Its purpose is to provide participants an in-depth understanding how corruption arises in local governments and what can be done to fight it.  The course is designed for local elected leaders, regional government administrators, anticorruption agencies’ professionals, experts from ombudsman offices and local anti-corruption organizations as well as governance specialists from development organizations

Former La Paz, Bolivia, Mayor Ronald MacLean-Abaroa will present his widely-praised work on cleaning up the city administration of La Paz. Ana Vasilache, founding President of Partners Foundation for Local Development, a Romanian NGO, will discuss the role of civil society in dealing with corruption in local government.  This writer will offer a series a modules on “Developing and Implementing an Anticorruption Strategy at the Local Level” drawing from the UNODC’s Anti-Corruption Strategies: A Practical Guide for Development and Implementation and case studies of successful anticorruption initiatives at the local level.

The Academy is located Laxenburg, Austria, a small town 12 miles south of Vienna. Details on the course and registration information is available here

Anticorruption Investigators and Prosecutors: Bookmark this Web Site!

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The International Anticorruption Resource Center, a Washington-based group of American investigators and former prosecutors, has developed a first-class web site on how to investigate and prosecute corruption crimes that everyone in the business of investigating or prosecuting corruption crimes should bookmark.  Divided into three main sections – Detection, Proof, and Evidence – the site guides the reader through the entire process of developing and presenting a corruption case: from the first interview with a whistleblower through assembling the facts to proving them in a court of law.  While there are any number of Web sites with material useful for investigators and prosecutors (here and here for examples), this is the only I have found that pulls together in one place the basics that every anticorruption investigator or prosecutor needs.

Although clearly aimed at those in the early stages of their career, I recommend that even the most harden veterans peruse the site.  They will find it a valuable refresher and may well find some helpful tips.  Two pages I particularly liked were – Continue reading →

Guest Post: Empowering Youth To Fight Corruption — Examples from Kosovo

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Shqipe Neziri, Manager with UNDP’s anticorruption program in Kosovo, contributes the following guest post on behalf of UNDP-Kosovo. [Note: For purposes of this post, in reflection of the fact that Kosovo is not a member of the UN, references to “Kosovo” should be understood to be in the context of Security Council Resolution 1244 (1999)):

Young people are often forgotten victims of corruption, left without an opportunity to voice their concerns, to help make positive changes, or to enhance their skills and become active citizens for a better future. Yet young people can play an important role in the fight against corruption. They tend to be more open to wide-scale socio-political transformation and have less vested interested in maintaining the status quo. Moreover, the values and attitudes of young people today will shape the values of the society tomorrow. The question is how to harness then energy and innovation of young people, and to provide the right kinds of support.

UNDP’s recent efforts in Kosovo may provide an example of how to foster a youth-based anticorruption movement. Corruption in Kosovo is a serious problem, viewed by Kosovars as the third-most serious problem, after poverty and unemployment. Kosovo’s population skews young –half of its 2 million citizens are under the age of 30 – and Kosovo’s young people are frustrated by corruption and lack of economic opportunity. (The overall unemployment rate is 35%, while unemployment rate of youth aged 15-24 years is 60%.) For several years, UNDP Kosovo has been placing youth at the core of its development support. Through our anticorruption efforts we have been helping to strengthen the voice of the youth and to foster their participation in decision making through the use of traditional and social media, and working to make institutions more responsive to youth.

What are some of our most successful youth-focused anticorruption initiatives? Here are some examples, which might serve as useful models for others: Continue reading →

Guest Post: Spend Anticorruption Resources on Professional Training, Not Postgraduate Education

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Alan Doig, Professor at Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, contributes the following guest post:

Resources for anticorruption are scare; how should they be spent? In particular, how should the international community (national aid agencies, international institutions, and private donors and foundations) allocate resources for education and training programs for anticorruption professionals?

Although “education” and “training” are often lumped together as one category, in fact they are quite different. Education is about the acquisition of knowledge, with the accompanying change in awareness and understanding, through the provision and assimilation of information. Training involves the acquisition of the applied knowledge and technical skills required to improve individual and organizational performance in the workplace, invariably in relation to specific roles or functions. In terms of impact, education would look for longer-term benefits and impact while training can be judged more immediately by what the person does once trained.

The question of how to spend the even more limited funds that are not tied to the big spenders (the multilateral and bilateral donors) brings this issue into sharp focus, and raises the question of whether too much too much is allocated to postgraduate anticorruption education, at the expense of practical anticorruption training. Continue reading →