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Some thoughts on accountability and integrity

Some thoughts on accountability and integrity. James Donovan Public Financial Management Advisor Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), Stockholm. Sida’s Anti-Corruption Rule (2005) Public Finance Management In Development Co-operation: A Manual for Sida Staff (2007).

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Some thoughts on accountability and integrity

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  1. Some thoughts on accountability and integrity James DonovanPublic Financial Management AdvisorSwedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), Stockholm

  2. Sida’s Anti-Corruption Rule (2005) • Public Finance Management In Development Co-operation: A Manual for Sida Staff (2007)

  3. Anti-corruption at Sida • Corruption is a major issue in popular support for Swedish development cooperation • Corruption is fundamentally and profoundly anti-poor • Never accept! • Always act! • Always report!

  4. How Sida fights corruption • Preventing corruption and reacting to suspected corruption in Sida-supported programs and projects • Global, regional and bilateral support to explicit anti-corruption programs and projects: • Transparency International, • United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), • Vietnam’s diagnostic study of corruption, new anti-corruption law, and National Anti-Corruption Steering Committee • Global, regional and bilateral support to other elements of national integrity systems: • PEFA at the World Bank Institute, • Macroeconomic and Financial Management Institute of Eastern and Southern Africa (MEFMI), • parliamentary oversight, supreme audit institutions, tax administration…

  5. National integrity systems • Anti-corruption laws, regulations, strategy, agencies • Public administration: • the civil service • public financial management • public sector oversight: accountants, internal audit, Ministry of Finance, external audit/supreme audit institution, parliament • Private sector: • Accountants • Audit • business and professional associations • stock markets

  6. National integrity systems 2 • Public debate: • opposition political parties • Media • civil society • Multi-party democracy: • replacing leaders • but financing electoral campaigns • Principles: • “checks and balances”/independent, competing public institutions, • transparency, • accountability

  7. Corruption in Sweden • 6 of 163 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index 2006, behind Finland, Iceland, New Zealand, Denmark and Singapore • Public sector well functioning and responsive to citizens’ complaints • Respected and independent civil service • High degree of transparency • Principle of Public Information in the constitution • semi-autonomous government agencies, formally steered, formally reporting, publicly accountable • relatively few state-owned (parastatal) enterprises

  8. Sida’s anti-corruption hypothesis • Personal morality versus well-functioning national integrity system • Anti-corruption laws, regulations, strategy, agencies are not enough • Many interdependent elements of a national integrity system • Years of effort to improve • But things can improve significantly before everything is in place, e.g., “name and shame”

  9. Sida’s anti-corruption hypothesis 2 • Possible lessons from Sweden: • transparency, • public debate, • accountable public organizations, • public administration reform including • civil service reform and • public financial management reform

  10. You are involved in historic processes • Those of us who believe in the public sector must make higher demands on the public sector

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