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This blog is part of a series on how open government can help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The series came out of a collaboration between the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Bangkok Regional Hub and the Open Government Partnership (OGP) to find practical examples of how open government is helping countries achieve the SDGs in the Asia-Pacific region. For more details on the competition, the blog series, and how open government can help achieve the SDGs, please see our introductory blog post.

When I travel abroad and meet with my foreign counterparts, colleagues, and friends, I always ask them one question. “To what extent are you and the people of your country satisfied with the quality and delivery of public services? Can you receive the service you want?” It’s interesting to know how the governments of other countries serve their people.

Research done by Mongolian CSOs from 2008 to 2010 showed that over 80% of respondents in the country are not happy with the public services they receive.  Although Mongolia is on the list of middle-income countries, there have been no tangible improvements in people’s lives yet. Social inequalities are rising, and the gap between rich and poor is widening.

READ MORE: http://www.opengovpartnership.org/node/9800

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Earlier this summer, the UNDP Bangkok Regional Hub and OGP launched a call for information on open government initiatives that are contributing to or have the potential to contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the Asia-Pacific region.

The call was developed in response to major milestones that have been achieved in the last year. In September 2015, all 193 UN member countries endorsed the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the UN General Assembly. More than 50 OGP countries have since endorsed the Joint Declaration on Open Government for the Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, committing to use OGP infrastructure and National Action Plans to help achieve the SDGs.

With this as the background, the idea behind launching the call was simple: to find practical examples of open governance supporting the SDGs, that have already been or are being tested on the ground with signs of positive results, and share them so that others can take inspiration from and learn from these examples.

READ MORE: http://www.opengovpartnership.org/blog/ogp-webmaster/2016/08/02/open-government-sustainable-development-asia-pacific-results-are

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Legal persons dominate today’s global economy. Large multinationals engaged in transportation, construction, telecommunication, mining, energy, chemicals, and many other sectors have a huge share of global business activities. This puts them at risk of getting involved in high-level corruption cases.

Perhaps not surprisingly, many of the biggest corruption investigations today concern legal persons rather than natural persons. For example, China fined GlaxoSmithKline, the UK’s biggest pharmaceutical firm, $490 million after finding it guilty of bribery. The U.S. Department of Justice imposed nearly $220 million in fines on Japanese company JGC for bribing Nigerian officials to secure development contracts for liquefied natural gas facilities. More recently, government agents raided the headquarters of Lotte group¬-among the largest conglomerates in South Korea-as part of a corruption probe. One of the highest fines ever imposed occurred to Alstom S.A., a French power and transportation company, sentenced to $772,29 million. Overall, Alstom paid more than $75 million in secret bribes to government officials in several countries, such as Indonesia and Taiwan.

Criminal prosecution has an important deterrent effect on corruption. However, punishing only natural persons in cases that directly involve corporations might not be enough. We need to establish clearly the liability of legal persons for corruption offences in order to deter corporations willing to break the rules. This is easier said than done. Many countries today remain reluctant to impose criminal liability on legal persons because of a strict adherence to the traditional maxim that requires moral culpability for the commission of criminal offences.

Article 26 of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) establishes the liability of legal persons as a mandatory provision. At the end of 2015, ten of the eleven countries in the Southeast Asian region had completed or were concluding their first cycle review (Chapter III and IV) of the UNCAC, which included Article 26. The review found that most Southeast Asian countries do not sufficiently cover the requirements of UNCAC Article 26. Even in countries where the appropriate legislation is in place, there have been only few prosecutions and convictions of legal persons for corruption offences.

In addition, eight of the ten Southeast Asian countries that have completed their first cycle review do not have specific legislation explicitly addressing the issue of active bribery of foreign public officials and officials of public international organizations, as required by UNCAC Article 16, Paragraph 1. Foreign bribery is an act involving a foreign national providing or offering a benefit to another person from a different country, or causing a benefit to be provided or offered to another person from a different country, where the benefit is not legitimately due. This issue is very relevant given the high degree of economic development and integration among the countries in the region.

To support ongoing anti-corruption reform efforts in the region, the Regional Office for Southeast Asia and Pacific (ROSEAP) will organise a Regional Workshop on Liability of Legal Persons for Corruption Offences at the National and International Level, in Bangkok, Thailand, on 16-17 August 2016. The workshop will bring together about 50 policymakers and practitioners from across Southeast Asia and beyond. The goal is to raise awareness on these topics among public officials from the region and strengthen legislative and implementation capacities of the national authorities in ASEAN with regard to Art 16 and 26 of the UNCAC.

Source: https://www.unodc.org/southeastasiaandpacific/en/what-we-do/anti-corruption/topics/05-foreign-bribery-laws.html

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Open Government Partnership and UNDP Bangkok Regional Hub, supported by IBM Philippines, co-organized the 2016 OGP Asia-Pacific Regional Dialogue, hosted by the Asian Development Bank in Manila, Philippines, on 21-22 July 2016. Over a 100 civil society group representatives, civil servants and champions of open governance gathered to exchange knowledge, challenges and perspectives on how to ensure transparent and efficient institutions, delivering high quality public services for their citizens.

The dialogue aimed at raising the ambition level of individual countries’ commitments to open governance, while promoting and deepening collaboration between government and civil society.

The discussions covered a range of diverse topics, including open data, fiscal and legislative openness, openness in natural resources, public service delivery, how the implementation and monitoring of open government initiatives can be strengthened to deliver better results and how open governance can be used to address the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Open government is not an end, it is a means to engage citizens in the public affairs of their country, founded on the pillars of transparency, accountability and citizen engagement.

The linkages to the Goal 16, whose targets also address access to information, inclusive, accountable and transparent institution, rule of law, are evident. However open governance brings opportunities for an improved public service delivery across all sectors, thus contributing to the achievement of many other SDGs (health, education, gender equality, etc.).

Recently UNDP and OGP mapped out open government initiatives that are contributing to or have the potential to contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the Asia-Pacific region (“Transforming our world through open government”). Initiatives from 15 countries are implemented to achieve open government, enhance transparency and accountability, improve service delivery: they ranged from involving citizens in auditing public service delivery, increasing access to justice for victims of environmental pollution,  using mobile technologies to allow citizens and CSOs to monitor activity in the extractives sector, to improving the ease of doing business and linking parliamentarians to rural communities, just to name a few.

The top three initiatives (Check My Service – Mongolia, Community Initiative for Common Understanding – Nepal, Citizen Satsifaction Index – Pakistan), selected for their innovative approach to enhance transparency, accountability and citizen engagement and for their focus on “leaving no one behind”, were presented at the dialogue.

More than 100 civil society group representatives, civil servants, and champions of open governance gathered to exchange knowledge, challenges, and perspectives on how to ensure transparent and efficient institutions, delivering high quality public services for their citizens.

Recently UNDP and OGP mapped out open government initiatives that are contributing to or have the potential to contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the Asia-Pacific region.

Initiatives from 15 countries are implemented to achieve open government, enhance transparency and accountability, improve service delivery.

The top three initiatives (Check My Service – Mongolia; Community Initiative for Common Understanding – Nepal; Citizen Satisfaction Index – Pakistan), selected for their innovative approach to enhance transparency, accountability and citizen engagement and for their focus on “leaving no one behind”, were presented at the dialogue.

Visit the UNDP Bangkok Regional Hub website for more information: http://www.asia-pacific.undp.org/content/rbap/en/home/ourwork/democratic-governance-and-peacebuilding/responsive-and-accountable-institutions/open-government-for-sustainable-development/

Links to references in this article:

2016 OGP Asia-Pacific Regional Dialogue – http://www.asia-pacific.undp.org/content/rbap/en/home/presscenter/articles/2016/07/27/top-open-government-initiatives-from-asia-pacific-showcased-at-regional-dialogue.html

“Transforming our world through open government” – http://www.opengovpartnership.org/blog/liviana-zorzi/2016/05/17/mapping-open-government-initiatives-are-helping-contribute-sdgs-asia

Initiatives from 15 countries – http://issuu.com/undpasiapacific/docs/ogp_transforming_our_world_initiati/1

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UNDP in Ukraine’s Enhanced Public Sector Transparency and Integrity Project (2015-2018) aims at ensuring the compliance of Ukrainian corruption prevention institutions with international standards for transparency and accountability and, thus, helping them become more responsive and effective.

The project has released a praxis case report for Ukraine’s National Agency for Prevention of Corruption (NAPC), titled “European Anti-Corruption Agencies: Key Preventive Mechanisms.”  This case report summarizes smart practices used by five European anti-corruption agencies in Slovenia, Macedonia, Serbia, Latvia, and Romania. It presents them for possible application by the NAPC.

Among others, the report concentrates on issues of institutional architecture, provides analysis of key preventive mechanisms, including asset declaration verification, conflict of interest or whistle-blower protection, and offers key lessons learned accumulated over the years. The research results from collaboration of a group of UNDP-commissioned experts.

The report is one of the tools designed for the NAPC as part of the initial institution-building package. It is expected to help enable the newly created Ukrainian institution benefit from corruption prevention experiences of similar agencies and structures in Europe.

The Enhanced Public Sector Transparency and Integrity Project waslaunched in March 2016 with funding support from the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It aims to review existing impediments towards the full functioning of the NAPC, galvanize the deployment of its mandate, and ensure the development of conflict of interest management and an effective e-asset declarations verification system.

“Ukraine sets sail for an ambitious anti-corruption reform which cannot be completed without a sound institutional architecture [such as the NAPC],” said Janthomas Hiemstra, UNDP Country Director in Ukraine.

For more information about UNDP in Ukraine’s Enhanced Public Sector Transparency and Integrity Project, visit: http://www.ua.undp.org/content/ukraine/en/home/presscenter/articles/2016/03/15/new-project-to-help-ukraine-prevent-corruption/

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