News

In Nepal, it is estimated that corruption accounts for losses up to USD 3.3 billion. This has resulted in many development resources being diverted away from their intended beneficiaries, thereby elevating the cost of living. According to Transparency International, the cost of water in Nepal is 30 percent higher due to corruption, while general products cost on average 20 percent more than they should.

In light of the growing concern from both the Government of Nepal and civil society, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) jointly organised a ‘Partnering in Anti-Corruption Knowledge (PACK)’ training with the aim to improve the knowledge and understanding of the UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) amongst Government officials and the donor community.

The UNCAC is a global legally binding international instrument against corruption. It was formally adopted in 2003, and currently 171 parties are signatories to the convention. The UNCAC sets out to prevent and combat corruption and offers technical assistance in international cooperation and asset recovery. The Convention also outlines the role of civil society in countering corruption. 

Nepal ratified the convention in 2011 and has since been proactively involved in strengthening national legislation in accordance with the UNCAC. Currently, the National Strategy and Plan of Actions on anti-corruption includes 13 sub-strategies and upwards of 173 activities in the area of anti-corruption. Around 23 laws are also being considered for amendment, while eight laws are awaiting enactment. In an effort to further the national momentum on anti-corruption, the PACK training delivered by UNODC and UNDP brought together Representatives from the Government of Nepal and from the donor community, including Representatives from the World Bank, Norwegian Embassy, Department for International Development (DFID)- United Kingdom, Asian Development Bank (ADB) and other agencies. 

During the interactive training, the two groups were led into discussions around how they would seek to improve the environment in which anti-corruption activities take place. This activity brought forward ideas and concepts that reflected both the wishes and priority concerns of the participants. Some of the suggestions brought forward were (i) a concerted effort needs to be made to consolidate the various anti-corruption agencies and government entities, with the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) as the lead agency to coordinate and consolidate anti-corruption efforts in the country, (ii) establish and strengthen regional judiciaries and courts to alleviate the stress on the central authority, (iii) maintain and improve the rule of law within the country, to provide for a stronger foundation for development activities and (iv) improve efforts to help the Government of Nepal in developing process and result oriented programming. 

The donor community too put forward their perspective and concerns regarding anti-corruption activities in the county. They felt that criminalization of corruption in all sectors is important, as development efforts are not confined to public works and involve private sector actors as well. They also felt that in order to counter corruption it is crucial to have judicial independence, along with an active and free civil society.

The workshop concluded that a joint partnership on anti-corruption efforts should focus on (i) increasing the capacity of staff within anti-corruption organizations in order to focus on the core strategies of punitive and preventative functions, (ii) increasing interaction with the private sector, civil society and the media to sensitize them on anti-corruption issues, (iii) creation of a working group, in order to facilitate better coordination and interaction amongst stakeholders, (iv) developing a coordination mechanism for government agencies and (v) reviewing  the national strategy and providing a consolidated singular action plan to replace the multitude of other independently developed strategies and action plans.

This was the first-ever country level training in Nepal for both government and donors on Partnering in Anti-Corruption Knowledge. The discussions encouraged dialogue and a sharing of ideas between two critical anti – corruption stakeholders in the country – the Government and the donor community – and paved the way towards developing concrete proposals in the spirit of partnership.

The training was conducted under the UNODC led project titled, ‘Joint Action towards a Global Regime against Corruption’ with financial support from the Government of Australia.

Click here to read the UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC)

Read more

Read more

Today, the majority of the world’s population lives in cities. This poses great challenges but also brings big opportunities. With good management, cities can work as engines of growth and incubators for innovation. They can also serve as job providers, build sustainability and fight inequality.

On the other hand, corrupt cities could also transfer resources from the public to the elites, and generally from the poor to the rich, worsening urban inequity.

How can we thus ensure that urban governance delivers resources and services in a transparent, accountable way?

To answer this question and others, two weeks ago UNDP’s Global Anti-corruption Initiative, UNDP Colombia and the Bogota Chamber of Commerce organized a policy dialogue at the 7th World Urban Forum (WUF7) in the city of Medellín, Colombia.

The event, which took place in a traditional Maloca (a long house used by the natives of the Amazon as the centre of the village government) brought together government representatives, mayors, academics, the private sector, and UN officials to discuss how cities can fight corruption more efficiently to contribute to urban equity.

One takeaway from the dialogue was that “the end cannot justify the means.” As long as corruption prevails, sustainable development of cities may prove elusive. Corruption in cities takes places when political leaders cross ethical lines or compromise their integrity to access power or to justify the use of power and resources to achieve urban development without respecting accountability or decision-making processes. Once this happens, democracy at the local level cannot function, as public trust in politicians is damaged.

The dialogue also highlighted the need to demand more opportunities for civil society, women and youth networks to take an active role in local and urban governance. As one panelist emphasized, we need “more eyes and fewer hands” in decision-making processes. When our local representatives act transparently, when we have tools and means to see what they do, we can make informed choices when we vote, holding them accountable for their actions.

Finally, relevant national strategies (such as the judicial sector, public administration reform, and open government) should be reinforced at the local level to make anti-corruption efforts more effective. At the moment, anti-corruption strategies at national and local levels seem to be working in parallel.

Written by Anga Timilsina, Programme Manager, Global Anti-Corruption Initiative (GAIN), UNDP. This article originally appeared in http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/ourperspective/ourperspectivearticles/2014/04/24/fighting-corruption-and-urban-inequality-anga-timilsina/

Read more

UNDP Ukraine has been working on enabling a more effective “ex ante” corruption risk screening by equipping civil society with a simple-to-use methodology for civic anti-corruption expert assessment.
As a result, the Parliamentary Committee on Combatting Corruption and Organized Crime has requested UNDP to assist in replicating the methodology through its Civic Expert Council. Thanks to the support from UNDP, the Council managed to process 140 draft laws between August and December of 2013 with almost one third of those (27%) returning a risk-positive result.

Assessment results, made public on the Committee website, showed that some of the corruption-risks factors are: conflicts of laws, loopholes or wide administrative discretion instances.

For more information click here .

Read more

The municipality of Ivano-Frankivsk in Ukraine has lauched a mobile app aimed at increasing accessibility and transparency of the city’s service provision.According to a recent poll, in 2013 65% of Ukrainians were mostly or fully dissatisfied with the quality of administrative services provision by local authorities. The major difficulties citizens face when accessing public services are related with complicated procedures, long queues, territorial scatteration of the offices of administrative bodies, lack of comprehensive and accessible information and inconvenient office hours.

However, Corruption is also a widespread problem in Ukraine as well as in the city; it affects the interaction of citizens with state and local authorities. Bribes are often paid to ensure that public services are delivered adequately. Ukrainians recognized that they pay bribes because they think it is customary and expected. Overall, citizens do not know about existing mechanisms for reporting corrupt practices of public officials and responsible agencies.

According to recent surveys, only 4.1% of citizens who faced corruption, made efforts to report or appeal the illegal actions of the officials. While one third of the citizens who dealt with corruption are not ready to take any actions (32.9 %), 22.9% of the respondents are ready to complain to the supervisor of the corrupted official and 17.6% are ready to go to court and law enforcement authorities. Therefore, based on this reality, strengthening transparency and citizens’ engagement in public decision-making have been identified as a concrete pathway to prevent corruption in service delivery in Ukraine.

Mobile application “Mobile Ivano-Frankivsk”

Ivano-Frankivsk is the municipality in Western Ukraine known for being at the forefront of raising the standards of the administrative services provision and establishing feedback loops between the local authorities and citizens. In 2013, the city council initiated a project for the creation of a mobile app to improve service delivery in the municipality and to expand the opportunities for collecting people’s feedback for further improvement. The project was supported by UNDP Regional Anti Corruption Project, which covers the issues of capacity development for anti- corruption and supports the implementation of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) in Eastern Europe and the CIS region.

 The mobile app was launched in January 2014. It is based on the operational systems IOS and Android and contains the information about the city, its executive authorities and a useful telephone directory of 500 contacts of public authorities who can provide support and services to the citizens. The app provides easy access to all municipal emergency services, as well as allows citizens to report cases of corruption via 14 anti-corruption hot-lines of different local, regional and national level agencies.

The design of the anti-corruption functionalities in the mobile app was based on current legislation and standards including: the Constitution of Ukraine, the Laws of Ukraine “On Local Self-Governance Bodies”, “On Access to Public Information”, “On Prevention of Corruption”, “On Responsibility of Legal Entities for Corrupt Actions” and local regulations like the Statute of the Territorial Community of Ivano-Frankivsk, regulation on E-Office of Ivano-Frankivsk City Council.

Through “Mobile Ivano-Frankivsk” people can either submit an electronic petition to the city council or inform the responsible authorities or communal enterprises managers about corruption via phone numbers provided in the telephone directory of the app. The claims and petitions will be addressed according to current legislation within the legally established time limit (30 to 45 days).

Steps in developing the “Mobile Ivano-Frankivsk”

The project design and first phase of implementation took almost a year. There were five major steps of the process:

1. Key challenges in receiving requests and complains from the residents were analysed through focus group discussions with the target groups of the population.
2. A prototype of the app was developed and presented to the target groups. The potential users draw attention to the need of constant updating of information, need for a free call option through Skype and simplification of some procedures.
3. These recommendations were considered in the final product.
4. The customized software was developed by the selected contractor and uploaded to Google Play. The similar app will be soon uploaded to the AppStore in the nearest future.
5. The promotion campaign carried out by the municipality started in March 2014 and its planned until June 2014.

Initial results and sustainability measures

The mobile app has the potential to become a real lifehacker for local residents as it helps to solve everyday problems in a smart way. In Ivano-Frankivsk, there are 243.000 citizens and approximately 80 thousand devices where the app can be used. The app “Mobile Ivano-Frankivsk” became available for free download through Google Play on January 18, 2014. During the first month, with no promotion campaign over 50 people downloaded the app and many of them left their positive feedback. The awareness campaign was initiated by the city council in March to popularize the app among local residents. By the end of 2014, the municipality plans to engage 10% of the potential users (8 thousand citizens) to use the app through a massive communication strategy.

“Mobile Ivano-Frankivsk” is a decisive step for establishing transparency and ways of communication between the local authorities and citizens. This project is destined to succeed, because it allows simplifying the access to crucial information on the municipality and its livelihood in such a simple and innovative way. We are planning to introduce similar practices in the future. Once our first app proves its efficiency, we plan to offer more similar useful services to the clients of the Centre for Administrative Services Provision, e.g. citizens’ e-offices and Digital Business Incubator”, says Ruslan Panasiuk, Deputy Mayor of Ivano-Frankivsk.

The mobile application will be maintained and operated by the municipality; it is planned to regularly update the information. In addition, the City Council plans to add the module for paying public utility fees, option to make appointment online for a visit to the Center for Administrative Services Provision etc. The municipal officials also want to hear feedback of the citizens on the app at the municipal hearings and through the surveys held by the city council.

Tips and recommendations from the practitioners

1. One of the important elements for success of the project is involvement of the potential users from the very beginning, formulation of the functionalities and tasks of the app. This helps to avoid introducing changes to the structure at the later stages and reach maximum effectiveness of the product.
2. During the focus groups it was discovered that the citizens were not well acquainted with the technologies of mobile apps. Therefore, it is important to involve experts for participation in such events, who could provide comprehensive and professional explanation to the audience on different aspects and options.
3. The promotion campaign on the mobile app among potential users should be planned from the very beginning of the project along with other steps.

Information:

• The project implementation period – May –December 2013
• Total project cost – 18`215.38 USD, equally shared by UNDP Regional Anti Corruption Project and Ivano-Frankivsk municipality.

For more details, please contact Serhiy Rudenko, Head of Business Support and Development of Department of Economic and Integration Development of Ivano-Frankivsk City Council, by e-mail sergyrud@gmail.com, web-site www.mvk.if.ua

Galyna Smirnova, Capacity Development Expert, EU and UNDP Project/ “Smart Practices for Oversight by Non-State Actors on Administrative Service Provision”

For more information contact:
Olena Ursu , Project Manager EU and UNDP ( olena.ursu@undp.org )

Read more