Anti-Corruption Strategies – the good, the bad and the ugly
During many years of addressing anti-corruption worldwide every anti-corruption implementer has seen and worked on a country’s anti-corruption strategy. I have had the opportunity to work with at least four different strategies and have seen at least ten, as well as working on other types of governmental strategies such as ones focusing on disaster risk.
To be clear, most strategies are not implemented as desired and in some cases, they even fail, and most donors do not like to admit this. Governments collectively shrug and hope for the best and take the old one and with the help of a range of actors, pull together a new one, hoping for the best.
As you can imagine, this is not the best way to spend the donor’s taxpayer’s money on an anti-corruption strategy and we should also assume that government officials would also prefer better results.
From this perspective and recognizing that this is not a comprehensive overview of strategies the focus will be to make some guidelines based upon experience, which I hope will allow for better outcomes. To begin with let us recognize that better strategies encompass clear goals, which are measurable, are realistic and clear as to the financial resources needed.
1) Preparation
We all are guilty of not giving ourselves enough time to complete a project, and this can be said for anti-corruption strategy preparations. I have seen countries focused on daily anti-corruption issues and find themselves six months out without a clear pathway to strategy. The simple approach, which it seems that most groups do not take the time to perform should include the following:
a) Review previous strategy one year prior to the requirement of a new strategy.
i) What was successful, what was not and what is needed to create a better result.
b) Who will participate and will they be chosen (CSOs, donors, a range of government officials).
c) What is everyone’s role.
d) Who, in government, is leading and how will they be supported.
e) Finally – the timeline, clearly laid out with timings and responsible parties and if possible, laying out who additional supports the process (reviewers, donors, e.g.)
This all looks quite simple but having participated in these strategy creation sessions, so much of this does not occur. As practitioners, we have an obligation to not only provide support but truly lead and help work with governments as they elaborate their new strategy. The advantage that a practitioner has is experience. This is not a cookie-cutter experience but helping governments create clear documents, based upon being a true partner, hearing what has worked and providing support as to what has worked in other locales, with the goal of developing a strategy which is clear and achievable.
2. Designing and developing the strategy and the action plan
Again, experience in this area leads to a broad range of approaches, which means that all the preparatory work is vital to a positive outcome. This includes ensuring that the strategy is tied to the action plan, which in turn requires clarity both as to outcomes as well as funding sources.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves before the strategy work begins, it is important to decide what is the goal of the strategy, which then feeds into the action plan, and how and who should monitor all of this work. This will help create a structured approach and help during the strategy and action plan development. What I have seen operationally, prior to the literal writing of the documents, is a combination of international and local guidance to the group which is working on developing the strategy. This addresses a concern by both donors and governments that the created document is either too broad and does not address local issues or is poorly structured and does not look broadly at the true corruption concerns in the country. This preparatory work is so important and should and needs to be a part of the timeline. This will circumvent the usual problem, which is that day-to-day work continues and this bit of extra work, if it is not built in, will be overlooked and the strategy and action plan will be worse for this.
All of this is essential, and the time taken to develop a true vision is so important. Time taken in this area will ultimately create a workable and successful strategy.
From this point going forward, the true work begins, which is based upon the timeline and clear scope of work to be accomplished by all the defined parties. In an ideal world, this would lead to the strategy and action plan being created within the agreed upon schedule.
As can be seen, this document creation process is slightly easier, if the political situation does not change too much. Of course, this is easier said than done, but I hope that this at least gives a bit of clarity in a process that has in many countries seems to be more difficult than needed.
The final take away is that all preparatory work is so important, and the more time taken to create a solid framework line is well worth the time, even if it does seem to be prescriptive. But it is worth it.