Tag Archives: transparency

Two Questions for the Open Contracting Partnership

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One of today’s more promising global anticorruption movements is The Open Contracting Partnership.  A venture that brings together organizations as different as the World Bank, the Philippines Government Procurement Policy Board, and Oxfam, its goal is to open government contracting to greater transparency and public participation.  As many studies show (click here, here, and here for recent examples), corruption infects all stages of the procurement process  — from skewing the specifications to favor a single firm to rigging the tendering process to rampant cheating in contract performance.  And as many of these same studies argue, less secrecy and more public involvement in the process is one way to curb it.

The Partnership has taken important steps towards realizing these objectives since its launch in October 2012.  It has developed global principles governing contract openness, created a standard format for reporting data on government contracts, collated information on open contracting in the award of natural resource concessions and land, assembled a quality staff and advisory board, and a fostered an enthusiastic global community of practice.

All this is not only welcome but laudable, and the organizers and supporters of the Partnership are to be congratulated for the initiative.  Now that the Partnership is firmly established, however, it is time to address two questions it has so far avoided. Continue reading →

Guest Post: Typologies of (Anti-) Corruption — How Much More Boring Can It Get? Or Maybe Not…

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Dieter Zinnbauer, Senior Program Manager for Emerging Policy Issues at Transparency International, contributes the following guest post:

Remember that childhood game, you say a word over and over and it seems to lose its meaning and just dissolves into a melodic sound? I feel similarly about trying to slice up the umbrella concept of corruption and sort it into practical, reasonably comprehensive, and distinctive subcategories – an endeavor that usually gets out of hand, consumes disproportionate amounts of scarce thinking-time and energy, and eventually leaves the participants more confused and in disagreement than at the outset. Yet quite recently I have begun to change my mind a bit about the unproductiveness of typologizing (anti)corruption. In fact, I have begun to derive some surprising enjoyment and inspiration from playing around with different ways to look at and classify different types of (anti)corruption. Here three examples: Continue reading →

Guest Post: Monitoring as a Democratic Imperative

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Professor Paul Lagunes of the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs contributes the following guest post:

The fact the bureaucrats who populate the ranks of the public administration do not run for office poses a significant challenge to electoral democracy—a challenge that is accentuated by citizens’ inability to properly monitor their own government. Citizens, after all, dedicate a majority of their time to private affairs and are often confused, if not repelled, by the complexities of public administration. Given this principal-agent problem, what can be done to improve monitoring, fight corruption, and hold governments accountable?

I recently had the opportunity to evaluate the efficacy of anticorruption monitoring in Mexico. This research indicates that independent audits over sensitive governmental processes can boost the levels of discipline, stringency, and honesty among civil servants. Indeed, even when communities find it difficult to overhaul their governing institutions and renew and professionalize their bureaucracies, they can rely on independent experts to raise bureaucrats’ level of accountability. But the improved monitoring associated with independent audits is only when accompanied by robust oversight and accountability. Continue reading →

Big Data and Anticorruption: A Great Fit

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There is no shortage of buzz about Big Data in the anticorruption world. It’s everywhere — from public efforts like Transparency International’s public procurement analysis to cutting-edge private-sector FCPA compliance programs implemented by Ernst & Young. TI has blogged about Big Data and corruption, with titles like “Can Big Data Solve the World’s Problems, Including Corruption?” and “The Potential of Fighting Corruption Through Data Mining.” Ernst & Young’s conclusion is more definite: “Anti-Corruption Compliance Now Requires Big Data Analytics.”

In previous posts, contributors to this blog have written about how the anticorruption community was excited about social media-style apps (“crowdsourcing”) in anticorruption efforts. Apps like iPaidABribe allow citizens to report their encounters with corrupt officials, generating a fertile data set for anticorruption activists. Big Data is a related effort: activists can mine huge amounts of data for patterns that reveal corrupt activity, making it a powerful tool for transparency. However, as the name suggests, Big Data requires massive amounts of data in order to be useful.The anticorruption community should throw its weight behind proposals to open up data sets for Big Data analysis. As with crowdsourced anticorruption efforts, the excitement surrounding Big Data could quickly turn into disappointment unless this tool can be integrated into the broader anticorruption effort. Continue reading →

When Transparency Isn’t the Answer: Beneficial Ownership in High-End Real Estate

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Earlier this month Transparency International UK published a report entitled “Corruption on Your Doorstep: How Corrupt Capital Is Used to Buy Property in the UK.” The Britain-specific recommendations are part of TI’s broader “Unmask the Corrupt” campaign, a call by TI, and echoed by others, to establish public registries of beneficial ownership. A similar call to unveil the individuals behind the shell corporations used to buy luxury condos in Manhattan garnered a lot of attention stateside during last month’s New York Times “Towers of Secrecy” series on the city’s high-end property market (see here, here, here, here, here, and here). The anticorruption rationale for mandating disclosure of real property beneficial ownership seems straightforward: As both the TI-UK report and the NYT series argue, buying real property in New York and London is an appealing way to launder stolen funds, because high-end real estate purchases allow a corrupt actor to inject millions of dollars into the legitimate market without having to deal with pesky anti-money laundering regulations, completing the purchases through shell companies that disguise the true beneficial owner. Requiring public disclosure of the beneficial owners of real property would in theory have two related benefits: First, requiring purchasers to reveal beneficial ownership information up front would dissuade some from using real property as a means of laundering money, and second, if law enforcement authorities have ready access to this information, it will make it easier to instigate and conduct investigations, as well as to seize assets later on.

Indeed, transparency in real property beneficial ownership seems like the kind of thing all anticorruption advocates should support, which is why it may seem a little counterintuitive when I say TI and others are taking the wrong tack. Pushing for central public registries of beneficial ownership of real property will not likely achieve the two objectives, and may have serious drawbacks. Here’s why: Continue reading →

Sunlight and Secrecy: Whistleblowing, Corruption, and the NSA

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While press coverage of the US National Security Agency (NSA) has been dominated by revelations, and concerns, regarding the scope of the NSA’s surveillance programs, recently this organization has been in the news for an altogether different reason. A number of recent articles have highlighted the remarkably porous nature of the relationship between the NSA and the private sector as well as potentially improper conduct on the part of a number of NSA officials. In October alone, several stories emerged regarding the fact that: (1) the husband of a high-ranking NSA official was registered as the resident agent of a private signals intelligence consulting firm located at the pair’s residence while the official herself served as the resident agent for an office and electronics business, also headquartered at her home; (2) the NSA’s Chief Technical Officer had been permitted to work for up to 20 hours a week for a private cybersecurity firm while still holding his post; and (3) the former head of the NSA had founded a private consulting company shortly after his retirement in spite of the fact that many commentators have questioned the degree to which he will be able to set aside confidential information he learned during the course of his time as the head of this organization.

To be clear, while a few commentators have thrown around the term “corruption” when discussing the apparent impropriety of some of these arrangements, there have been no allegations that the officials involved broke any laws or otherwise acted in a manner that can be deemed “corrupt” in any formal sense. Nonetheless, this cluster of incidents provides an opportunity to pause and reflect upon the inherent difficulties of identifying and addressing instances of corruption within the context of an organization which is extremely insular and unavoidably secretive. More specifically, the crucial part that whistleblowers and the media have played in bringing these incidents to light raises the question of what role, if any, we believe that greater transparency may play in exposing instances of corruption within the NSA. Sunlight may be the best disinfectant, as Justice Brandeis famously noted, but can or should it play a role when the organization in question is, by necessity, shrouded in secrecy?

Continue reading →

The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative: A Critique and Proposed Reforms

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The natural resources sector–particularly extractive industries like mining and petroleum–is famously beset by corruption. In many countries, natural resource extraction is controlled by the wealthy, politically-connected elite, leading to a form of “resource curse” in which the majority of the population does not benefit from natural resource wealth and economic development outside the extractive sector stagnates. One of the most prominent strategies that has emerged in recent years to combat corruption in the extractive sector is a push for greater transparency. While many advocates of this strategy have pushed–with some qualified success–for laws that require greater disclosure by companies and governments, one of the most important pro-transparency initiatives is voluntary: the so-called Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).

EITI members include states, companies, civil society groups, and institutional investors. Though membership is voluntary, members must comply with the principles established by the EITI board. Member companies are obligated to disclose the amount they pay for extractive contracts in member countries; EITI also also requires members to disclose revenues generated from the extractive industry and indicate how the revenues contribute to the national budget. Since its inception in 2002, EITI has claimed a number of successes. For example, EITI reports revealed a company owed US $8.3 billion in tax payments to the Nigerian government–more than what the Nigerian federal government spent on education over a period of 3 years.

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E-Government and Corruption: Evidence from India

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From the Open Government Initiative for data sharing in the United States to the plurilateral Open Government Partnership abroad, online government or “e-government” is an important trend in global public administration.  In addition to improving government efficiency and citizen access, studies suggest that e-government can also facilitate accountability and reduce corruption.  Of course, there is reason to be skeptical as to whether successes of e-government champions such as Estonia and South Korea can translate to developing countries, where resources are more limited and corruption is often most severe.  But a 2009 study that excluded OECD countries found that a significant increase in the services supplied online could account for as much as a 13 percentile improvement in a country’s ranking in the World Bank’s Control of Corruption index, even after controlling for changes in gross domestic product and press freedom.

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Dollar for Dollar, Procurement Collusion Is Still Better Than Outright Bribery

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In a piece on this blog last March, Rick highlighted a perverse consequence of requiring transparent bidding in government procurement. Although bid disclosure is intended to prevent public officials from secretly favoring companies that pay bribes, it can facilitate collusion among bidders by making it impossible for cartel members to defect from collusive agreements without getting caught.  As a result, the cartel is easily enforced and the public pays an inflated price for the goods or services being supplied, yielding improper profits for the winning firm just as if it had paid a bribe to secure the contract.

Rick’s example reminds us of the importance of considering the collateral consequences of anti-corruption remedies before employing them.  Nonetheless, public procurement reform could be an instance in which it is desirable to shift the method of corruption, even if we can’t reduce the total loss to corruption on a dollar-for-dollar basis.  Even if the private cartel problem worsens, this could be a cost worth bearing if it leads to less collusion between government procurement officers and favored private firms.

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What the World Bank Can Do About Bid Rigging

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I took the World Bank to task last week for its failure to tackle bid rigging and other forms of collusion in its new procurement framework.  Despite mounting evidence that prices on many Bank-financed projects are jacked up 25%, 50%, or even more thanks to bidder cartels, the new framework does not even mention the problem let alone recommend steps to combat it.  The omission is all the worse because developing country governments and other donor agencies generally follow the Bank’s lead on procurement policy.  With upwards of $1 trillion likely to be spent on power plants, water works, and other big-ticket items in developing nations over the next decade, if the rest of the development community, like the Bank, remains blind to the risk of collusion, the potential losses could be staggering.

What might the Bank do were it to decide to amend the new framework to confront the risk of collusion in public procurement? Continue reading →