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| Special The requested resource (/editor/default/) is not availableReport |
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The requested resource (/editor/default/) is not available
| Points of View: Civil Society |
Establishing and sustaining public sector transparency in a country are often driven by an effective civil
society. The following composite interview explores what the role of civil society has been in Bangladesh, Mexico,
Tanzania, and two former Soviet bloc countries, Georgia and Romania. (See interview contributors by country, to
right.) The range of issues included here, from civil society support for freedom of information to a corruption-free
branding strategy, demonstrate the complexities that civil society faces in promoting transparency.
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 How would you rate the success of civil society in ensuring public sector transparency in your country?
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 Bangladesh
Bangladesh has historically been well-known for civil society involvement in different
spheres of life and public affairs in particular. Because of the student movement, Bangladesh
owes the identity of our nation to our youth. Our NGO movement has gained prominence in development
activities and in advocacy programs. Our newspapers are an important cornerstone of our democratic
society and have been an important ally in holding our public system accountable. However,
unfortunately, the overall impact of civil society in ensuring public sector transparency
remains low. Part of the reason is that we do not have a sufficient core of civil society groups
dedicated to addressing the issue of transparency and corruption. While there is a local
chapter of Transparency International, whose statements have interesting ripple effects in our
society, it is limited by questions over its methodology about how it gathers data. Ultimately, the
impact of civil society is limited by our political system. The fact that the major parties do not conduct
their affairs in a true democratic manner – choosing instead to adopt extra-constitutional
means of protests and engagement – weakens our civil society. Our government is highly
centralized; if Bangladesh had true local governments we would see that civil society
itself would be enriched as government would be closer to the people.
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Mexico
Permanent and effective results in establishing transparency require active involvement of governments
and political leaders. Civil society participation is a complement, not a substitute. In Mexico,
political will for transparency is scarce and highly unstable. Participation by civil society
organizations (CSOs) is most successful as a permanent reminder of the importance of transparency. CSOs
operate with different degrees of public policy involvement. Many are “neutral”, principally exercising
moral authority over the preparation of reports and documents that monitor the behaviour of public
officials or that advance government involvement with international conventions or agreements. Others
serve as catalysts bringing about concrete changes at the local level and planning social programs in anti-poverty
schemes. In this sense, transparency is integrated into the social control tools and schemes that increase public
information, by monitoring the decision-making process and reviewing decisions that have been made. Our regional
network, Transparency International for Latin America and the Caribbean, is a horizontal
space for sharing knowledge and information, and for exchanging tools disseminated in several countries. From a regional
perspective, civil society networks operate with a reasonable degree of success, although implementation has been far from
easy. Different degrees of institutional development make it difficult to harmonize minimum standards for public
procurement and contracting, or to have common rules for regulating the behaviour of public officials. While some
countries have quickly adopted freedom of information initiatives, others still maintain secrecy as the axis of their
political system. While some countries see the control of corruption in public finance as a necessary tool for improving the quality of public
expenditure, others think that budgetary oversight is still a privilege of governments.
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Tanzania
Poor, because civil society is weak and because media is compromised in this country. In Tanzania, transparency is being
ushered in through government intervention both covertly as well as overtly and through donor pressure.
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Romania
Civil society has a very important role in monitoring public institutions. But civil society
alone, in the sense of nonprofit and volunteer organizations, is not enough; the business sector
should be the driving force! As long as the Romanian business sector shares little of the civil society
concerns with respect to transparency decision-making and allotting funds, we believe civil society
will not be effective enough. I wish things would change faster and deeper, so we all could afford the
luxury of honest mistakes from time to time. As things go, all honest mistakes (such as maladministration) are
perceived and labeled as corruption. Therefore, we also engaged in information campaigns for the mass
public, but most importantly in technical assistance for the business sector—and we put this in
conjunction with the very recent launch of the Global Compact's 10th principle on transparency and anti-corruption.
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| What are the challenges you face in your work to promote transparency? |
Bangladesh
There are many challenges. First, we have to build our own reputation as independent and credible and
sustain this reputation. Who guards the guardians is always the issue. Ensuring that we remain transparent
ourselves in terms of how we are organized, how we are financed, how we work will be very important.
Second, we need to constantly build our own capacity-learning from other organizations locally and
internationally. Third, we need to have our resources that are transparently raised.
But perhaps the biggest challenge is that the problem is immense; people involved in anti-social
activities are hard nuts to crack. They will make all efforts to create problems to ensure that
the field is free of any challenges and obstructions. But the stakes are very high; Bangladesh’s
future in terms of development and democracy will hinge on all our collective effort to ensure a
transparent public sector.
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Mexico
Transparency is about giving answers to citizens’ questions. It is about learning how
organizations, governments or companies work. It is about the structure of national
budgets or about the priorities for a local government. Transparency is about sharing
information and knowledge, is about understanding that better collective choices can be made
when everyone is informed. This is why the promotion of transparency faces one major enemy;
concentration of power. Societies that consider information to be for the exclusive use of
rulers are reluctant about encouraging informed decisions, based on constructive debates
that nurture the final choice. In these societies, there is only one way of doing things, and strategic
information is reserved for those already in power with neither debate, nor a decentralized vision of
the decision making process. Our challenge is clear and concrete; replacing a short-term perspective on access to
information, based on concentration and control, for a medium-term view, based on better collective decisions.
Promoting transparency is a permanent effort. In Mexico, significant results were achieved in 2001 with the
approval of a Federal Access to Information Law and the creation of an independent body the Federal Access to
Information Institute. Our challenge remains: to build a culture with better information flows and the
involvement of sub-national governments in the construction of transparent and accountable governments,
particularly at the local level where information concentration is still frequent.
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Georgia
Georgia’s Rose Revolution and the peaceful ouster of Shevardnadze was a signal event in the politics of Eurasia
and has had a major impact on the other countries of the former Soviet Union. Georgia’s president-elect
Mikheil Saakashvili, the youngest president in Europe, was swept to power by the people of Georgia, expressing
their dissatisfaction with the corruption of the old regime and their resolution to demand system-wide reform.
However, Georgia still faces a myriad of important problems such as building effective and more transparent
governance systems, establishing the Rule of Law state, improving human rights protection mechanisms and better
safeguarding guarantees, and promoting anti-corruption efforts, as well as enhancing the economic capacity of the country.
Today, Georgia has a semi-presidential system with very strong powers of the President, a weak parliamentary
opposition, a weaker civil society, a judicial system which is not yet sufficiently independent and functioning, an underdeveloped
or non-existing local democracy, and a self-censored media. No efficient system for democratic checks and balances exists and no
support for critical voices in public dialogues. Improving these are key requirements for success of political reforms. Since
the Rose Revolution, the relationship between the Georgian government and local media has been a cause of increasing concern
because the government has tried to tame the press through administrative measures, claiming the excuse of establishing the Rule
of Law. Consequently, some Georgian television stations and newspapers, which had gained a following with their relatively
freewheeling reports, have now significantly toned down their criticism of the government and other media have closed. As a result, Georgia’s
ranking among 166 countries rose to 94th for its restrictions on press freedom as evaluated by the Paris-based press freedom watchdog
Reporters Sans Frontieres, up from 73 the previous year. According to Transparency International’s Global Corruption Report 2005, which
was launched on March 18, 2005, Georgia is again among the 20 most corrupt states of the world.
Attempts by Georgia’s new leadership to establish a mono-opinion and even intellectual dictatorship will not lead the country to
transparency, but once again to authoritarian rule and stagnation. It has now become clear over the last 12 years that developing
democracy in post-Soviet republics will be a long, drawn-out process, with no guarantee of success in many of them. Authoritarian
traditions remain strong even among the best educated, most Western-oriented leaders, with little or no personal involvement in the Communist
Party apparatus or stake in that tradition of governing. Georgian symptoms prove that not all of the Western-trained leaders are
immune to such temptations of power. Anti-corruption is an old tune which wearies with repetition even for a society as corrupt
as Georgia. Precisely for this reason, it is important that Georgian society, as well as international donor institutions, continue
to track the situation closely and, when needed, offer constructive criticism.
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Tanzania
A key challenge is to recognize the need for transparency and access to information in Tanzania and to give it prominence in ongoing
reforms. Although the importance of transparency is commonly recognized and accepted, what should be relatively straight
forward issues of public availability and posting of information (especially financial information) has a habit of disappearing or being
underemphasized in large, mainly technically oriented programs. Access to information and transparency, in the context of public
reform, is often approached as a technical issue and addressed through putting into place new regulations and conducting
“capacity building” programs. The problem with this approach is that access to information is usually more a political
issue than a technical one. This means that there are clear limitations with technical fixes to strengthening transparency and access to
information. This implies that there is a need to open up the reform process. This can be done through allowing external scrutiny and
monitoring by, for example, civil society and media. Following the dictum that ‘what is measured gets done’ it would make sense to devise simple
ways of tracking and measuring access to information and transparency.
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Romania
Romania has pretty much concluded its transition, according to officials elected in the November-December 2004 elections.
From a legislative point of view, that may be true, as TI-Romania just showed in the last National Corruption
Report, issued March 16, 2005. But what about institutional transition? Our contention is that Romania is in stringent
need of reform, especially with respect to civil service and public management. Transparency and participation in decision-making,
as well as access to information, represent crucial checks that must be at the public's disposal in order to understand
how public money is being spent, how effective public policies are, and what the objectives are thereof. Corruption is a
disease of the state apparatus. Like alcoholism, the disease must first be acknowledged by the afflicted, and the
easiest way of realizing the predicament is by looking at how that diseased body is perceived. Without transparency,
nobody can figure how serious the disease is. Hence, our effort is targeted primarily at improving the means
for the public to see how widespread or contained the disease is. This is the only way anybody can prescribe
effective treatment and/or make sure they don't also get contaminated.
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| What methods and tools do you find effective for tackling local transparency challenges? |
Bangladesh
For civil society groups, the best way to fight corruption is to create awareness among the people by information to hold
people accountable. Credible information used in a credible way can impact the public reputation of people and
institutions, and it is the fear of loss of public reputation that we would like to target. Part of our methodology is to announce a branding
strategy. It involves plans to investigate, subject to their agreement, the corporations, companies, banks, NGOs and other similar
bodies and certify them “corruption free”, if found so in all respects. This approach would, hopefully, encourage these
organizations to become corruption-free and go for such certification. We have similar plans for government departments too. If we are able to do this
correctly, then agencies and departments not wishing to be certified would by their reluctance already signal something about their reputation.
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Mexico
During the past decade, a number of organizations have actively promoted the right for public
information. A coalition of citizens, media and members of Congress effectively promoted the adoption of the 2001 Federal
Access to Information Law at the national level of government. Some other organizations have generated reports and independent
monitoring of public information available to the general public. Other organizations have worked from a strictly legal perspective, promoting legislative reforms and, particularly, the
adoption of Access to Information Laws for more than 20 of the 32 states in Mexico. CSOs are not working alone in this effort. In the case of
Mexico, the role of the media has also been crucial; investigative journalists have made a great contribution to the promotion of transparency by
using better public information as a source for their pieces. Today, it is much more frequent to read in depth analyses based on public
information and high-quality data mining and articles that serve both the purpose of informing and creating a critical mass for public
choices. Both CSOs and the media have collaborated in creating a social demand for public information, first from the executive
branch of power and now increasingly from Congress and the judiciary system.
Our own perspective has also included the generation and use of information for understanding the complexities of
corruption. In 2001 and 2003, Transparencia Mexicana developed the National Corruption and Good Governance Survey (NCGSG), based on the
answers of almost 16,000 households all over the country. The 2003 NCGSG showed that Mexican households had to pay more that
US $1 billion in small bribes for gaining access to a selected number of public services. Just to illustrate the power of data, think
about garbage collection. For years, Mexican households had to pay a “mordida” (bite) to get the Public Sanitation Service, and this situation
seemed to be normal. In 2003, the NCGS revealed that this form of petty corruption reached 100 million dollars
in a period of 12 months. “Normal” became a “problem” and local authorities started concrete action programs to face the
situation. The so called “power of data” is exercised here, first raising social awareness of the situation and then
offering a diagnostic tool for public policy reform.
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Georgia
New leadership is facing daunting problems because of the lack of educated and professional
personnel in all walks of governance. It has taken some drastic steps to shake up some of the most stagnant and corrupt
institutions – such as the Ministry of Defense and the traffic police. Nonetheless, critics point out that most
appointments at the middle management level are done based on personal and partisan loyalty. Reform of civil
service is lagging, while merit-based competitions for public positions are still few and far between.
In a letter of congratulations to President-elect Saakashvili from TI's international Chairman, Peter Eigen, TI outlines the
priorities for the first 200 days of the new presidency. TI called for a restructured anti-corruption commission, with powers of
investigation, which reports to parliament. TI also urged the new administration to implement the National Anti-Corruption Program.
The OECD in its special recommendations for Georgia, made within the Regional Anti-Corruption Action Plan, also recommended
strengthening the existing Anti-Corruption Coordination Council and establishing a Specialized Anti-Corruption Agency
with a mandate to detect, investigate and prosecute corruption offences, including those committed by high-level officials.
But instead, in 2004, the existing Anti-Corruption Coordination Council was eliminated by the new government and the anti-corruption
program has been put on the shelf. Instead about $2 million in donor money has been spent for the preparation of the anti-corruption
program and establishing the Anti-Corruption Coordinating Council. A specialized Anti-Corruption Agency was not established and now
there is no institution coordinating and monitoring anti-corruption measures or a strategy of the country.
In my view and according to the recommendations of international organizations the following steps should be taken:
- Introduce a system of merit-based appointments and promotion in the civil service;
- Prepare, and widely disseminate, comprehensive and practical guidelines for public
officials on corruption, conflicts of interest, ethical standards, sanctions and
reporting of corruption. Consider elaborating specific Codes of Conduct for public
officials and work on their dissemination;
- Strengthen the Public Service Bureau to improve the observance of legal
requirements in the civil service at large. Provided that the Public Service Bureau is strongly
committed to upholding professional and legal standards in the civil service, it should be vested with powers to enforce
legislation, in particular with the help of disciplinary actions;
- Ensure a more effective enforcement of the Law on Conflict of Interest and
Corruption. Consider strengthening the existing institution that monitors its implementation
and provide the institution with the authority to verify the accuracy of submitted asset
declarations. All asset declarations have to be available to the public;
- Adopt measures for the protection of employees in state institutions against
disciplinary action and harassment when they report suspicious practices within the
institutions to law enforcement authorities or prosecutors, and launch an internal
campaign to raise awareness of those measures among civil servants; adopt (basic)
regulations on the protection of “whistleblowers”;
- Ensure that the access to information legislation limits discretion on the part of the public
officials in charge as to whether the requested information should be disclosed, and to limit the
scope of information that could be withheld. Consider steps to reach out to both public officials as well as
citizens to raise awareness about their responsibilities and rights under the access to information
regulations.
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Tanzania
The tools available are public debate and statements by its members, directed to promoting local
transparency and thus aimed at reducing corruption. An example is the evaluation and articulation of the dimension
of economic loss through poor transparency in government business and transactions. Research and measuring
of access to information is good, as was indicated in the answer to the first question. This in turn should
feed into a public debate. More attention usually needs to be paid to the local levels, like the
district and village. What information is available to whom there? At the national level, the
internet can be a very useful tool. More innovative means can be used for making official information
available on the web in manners that will make it understandable, interesting and useful. At the local
level, notice-boards can be very useful.
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Romania
TI-Romania has spent five years of its "infancy" researching, monitoring and evaluating the performance of various
institutions. Now that we have grown older, and hopefully wiser, it's time for action. We have decided to support
governmental initiatives regarding the direct prevention and control of corruption. We believe it's not as
important to be able to sanction the corrupt, as it is to prevent individuals from engaging in corrupt acts.
Our advocacy effort yielded quite spectacular results with respect to changing legislation to the effect of
incriminating as corruption any and all abuse of entrusted power (both in the public and the private sectors), if connected
with private benefit. We are in the process of consolidating the public anti-corruption agencies, in the sense of
- Enhancing the human and financial resources of the National Anticorruption Prosecution;
- Promoting the creation of a sole central agency that would investigate, as an administrative
jurisdiction, conflicts of interests, incompatibilities, and unexplained wealth, by means of an integrated
national database;
- Stabilizing the attributions of public institutions in charge of financial audit of public
funds, administrative control, and inspection of private bodies, alongside with improving
the autonomy and career path within the greater scope of Romania's public service reform.
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| What safeguards can be implemented to curb political abuse of civic engagement? |
Bangladesh
Multiple checks and balances and emphasis on full disclosure at all levels of society are
important safeguards. For a central government to work we need strong local
governments. For an effective Finance Ministry, we need an independent central bank to keep
fiscal and monetary polices independent. For public universities to work, we need an effective
private university system under a common regulatory framework. So for every alpha there must
be a beta - a counter force that gives people choice. An end to monopolies, private, public or NGO;
that is the best safeguard. Two other points are also relevant. First, the rule of law and the legal
system can help us enforce these checks and balance. Second, independence of media and newspapers.
Jointly they can be a foundation for the safeguards.
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Mexico
Since Tocqueville, civic engagement has been seen as a form of improving institutional
performance, a complement to institutional activities, and not as a replacement for governmental
duties. In terms of public integrity and transparency, social participation has proved to be necessary
and relevant, but does not substitute the public official responsibility of keeping his/her administration
accountable and effective. One way of dealing with the political abuse of civic engagement is to establish
pragmatic forms of cooperation. A good example is an "Integrity Pact", a formal agreement between governments,
companies and civil society to restore confidence in a public procurement process. CSOs, in this case Transparency
International, facilitate a contract in which rules and sanctions are defined, and define a monitoring process
for the implementation of the contract. Within the rules, the most effective condition is that the CSO can
leave the process if it finds reasonable evidence of misbehaviour among the parties. Clearly, it is the
protection of each party's reputation that really weighs in this mechanism, including the CSO. It is a pragmatic
alliance, with a specific time-frame and clear consequences. It is a form of civic engagement, yes, but under
openly stated limits. In general, the most effective safeguard to political abuse of civic engagement is not
just a reasonable understanding that citizens' participation is desirable per se, but that it is much more
effective when civic engagement is done under proven methodologies and tools. Witnessing public sector
activities is relevant, but having an impact depends on the quality of the preliminary research and the
nature of the implemented tools or methodologies. In many ways, civic engagement and participation is done
under the logic of politics: "trust, but verify".
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Romania
Politicians are always the same; they are primarily interested in seizing power and/or remaining in office.
If (ab)using civic engagement and/or civic movements is beneficial to their own objectives, they will do it.
That's why we hope to be able to change the political parties' perspective on reform and public policy by means of an
alliance with the business sector. Where civil society activists can only work at changing mass public attitudes,
the business sector can add more pressure with financial backing. Political parties facing the prospects of getting
more or less money for their electoral campaigns from happy or angry business people, respectively, would think twice
before taking any course of action. To clarify, I am not advocating for influence peddling here, because we all know
this is happening already for promoting private interests; I am thinking of the positive attitude of the majority of people
who can simply say "no more!" and put their money where their mouth is.
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| Does civil society/media involvement always yield good results? |
Bangladesh
Civil society organizations may not always be above political interferences and influences or personal
corruption. That’s a problem everywhere. It depends on the leadership and members of civil society and the willingness
of the group to constantly undergo public scrutiny. I am a firm believer that we have to rely on systems and institutions
and not on any one individual because overdependence on any one individual or group of people weakens institutions.
But, at the end of the day, everything would depend on one’s conscience. Perhaps, the problems we face today are related
to how far we have let our personal standards of morality fall.
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Mexico
Naturally, an objective answer to this question is "no". Civil society involvement is no formula for yielding good results, just aThe requested resource (/editor/default/) is not availables much as government intervention is not always enough for reducing market imperfections, or as privatization is not always positive to the end-user. The inevitable question is what kind of participation or involvement is desirable, and when is the right moment for transforming it. In very general terms, I would say that civic engagement should be welcomed as a form of restoring confidence in governments. For social control, civic engagement is determined by the current condition of a government, its degree of institutional development, but more importantly, by its results. If governments are not providing public services correctly, the presence of corruption can be inferred. What societies demand is a better use of public funds, with higher impact on social development and quality of life. Both transparency and civic engagement are instrumental to higher goals; they are means of giving better results and not better results by themselves.
When is civic engagement not effective? Mostly when it is part of a bureaucratic scheme, trying to cover one requirement
of the General Auditor office or the National Development Plan. In many of these cases, civic engagement becomes a form of gaining
legitimacy, but rarely a form of increasing capacity for exercising social control or for improving the quality of public policies.
Social participation requires concrete objectives and desired outcomes, requires a commitment with a common understanding, and a precise
definition of roles and functions. Civic engagement may start spontaneously, but requires more than good will to become truly effective.
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Georgia
There are serious signals that the NGOs that are critically assessing the government’s actions are being ignored. The non-governmental system has been weakened by the revolution, because most of its more visible representatives took an active part in the struggle for power, and as a result have gained the highest positions in executive and legislative powers. Other representatives of the same most active NGOs lost their image for being objective and fair, and have since become a kind of “governmental pocket NGOs”. Of course, the government tries to present its own NGOs as those of the third sector, but this trial will produce only a short-term effect, because the strength of the civil sector is its objectiveness. But, as the revival of the civil society’s position is hesitant, it worsens the future of our country.
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Tanzania
Of course not. Civil society or media involvement is always more likely to be positive if there is a clear understanding of its objectives, transparency in the use of its resources and the organizations have support and understanding from the communities where they claim to operate. Donors can often be too uncritical in their support to CSOs, and they often approach civil society as a sector, looking for ways to build capacities and spend their money. This is not too likely to produce good results. A better approach would be to link up with groups or people who are already concerned and active and see how ongoing processes can be supported in a more organic way, and to see how ‘civil society’ can be assisted in giving a voice in the reform process.
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Romania
Yes and no; it's a matter of capacity and expertise. I can give you a simple example; TI-Romania issued the National Corruption Report on March 16, highlighting the most important evolutions/involutions of 2004 Romania in the field of anti-corruption policies and their implementation. The press welcomed the report as quite objective, balanced in its criticism, and useful in promoting a new approach. Two days later, Freedom House issued an independent audit report on the implementation of Romania's Anticorruption Strategy 2001-04. The scandal that ensued in the media focused on factual errors, methodological mistakes, misinterpretations of various legal and even constitutional provisions. As a consequence, it looks like a number of resignations and/or dismissals will soon ensue, while neither one of the reports managed to actually effect a positive change of the public agenda. As they say, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. But don't think all is painted black—at least ten of the most important pieces of legislation currently governing the field of anti-corruption in Romania are the results of good civil society work and involvement—access to information, public participation in decision-making, regulations incriminating corruption, conflicts of interests, assets control, etc. Organizations such as IRIS Center, Association Pro-Democracy, Romanian Academic Society, Center for Independent Journalism, and Media Monitoring Agency were instrumental in promoting these pieces of legislation, just as other organizations were instrumental in solving problems like child adoption, domestic violence, drug abuse, HIV/STD infections, shelter for refugees, and the like.
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The requested resource (/editor/default/) is not available
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 Muslehuddin Ahmed, founding chairman of Civic Watch-Bangladesh and the Foundation for Education and Development |
 Londa Esadze, coordinator of Georgia’s TraCCC Money Laundering Programme |
 Eduardo Bohórquez, director of Transparencia Mexicana |
 Codru Vrabie, executive director of Romania’s chapter of Transparency International |
 S. J. Chavda, secretary of Tanzania’s Front Against Corrupt Elements; and Geir Sundet, (link to page #16), from Tanzania’s Research on Poverty Alleviation |
 Geir Sundet is an independent consultant working at REPOA (Research on Poverty Alleviation), Tanzania. |
- Harris Whitback-Piñol, Commissioner for State Reform, Decentralization and Civic Participation, Guatemala
- Thomas Riley, executive director of Commonwealth Centre for Electronic Governance, Canada
- Jerzy Szeremeta, ECOSOC and a principal author of the 2003 World Public Sector Report 2003 “E-Government at the Crossroads”, United Nations
- Steven Clift, consultant named to “The 25 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics”, U.S.
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 How did Development Gateway members respond to our Public Sector Transparency Survey questions?
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| How does global transparency measure up? Charts and graphs on how transparency measures up. Click here. |
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