Announcement of Results of 2018 Anti-Corruption Initiative Assessment

Public agencies striving to facilitate engagement of private sector saw significant improvements in their grades on Anti-Corruption Initiative Assessment

January 31, 2019

Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission

The Republic of Korea

The result of the 2018 Anti-Corruption Initiative Assessment (AIA) reveals that public agencies that put efforts into facilitating the engagement of the private sector saw great improvements in their grades on the AIA by two or three notches.

The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC, Chairperson Pak Un Jong) undertook the Anti-Corruption Initiative Assessment that covers 270 target public agencies from November 2017 to October 2018 and announced the result on January 31, 2019.

So, the ACRC has conducted Anti-corruption Initiative Assessment every year to measure public organizations’ voluntary anti-corruption activities and achievements. The effectiveness of the assessment has been globally recognized, and major global networks such as the United Nations Development Program included the assessment in corruption-prevention best cases. This led many countries including Vietnam to adopt the corruption-prevention institution.

For the year 2018, the ACRC evaluated the progress of policy measures taken to prevent corruption in public agencies across six areas*, then classified the agencies into performance groups or tiers from 1 to 5, with 1 being the best performing category.

* ▲ Establishing Anti-Corruption Policy Plans ▲ Creating an Ecosystem Of Integrity ▲ Removal and Reduction of Corruption-Causing Factors ▲ Settlement of a Culture of Integrity ▲ Improving the Effects of Integrity ▲ Developing and Spreading Anti-Corruption Best Practices

【Result of Assessment】

The proportion of public agencies that obtained grade 2 or higher remained the same as last year, but the share of agencies that gained grade 4 or lower decreased on the 2018 AIA, indicating that efforts to promote anti-corruption initiatives by agencies have seen upward equalization (i.e. high achievements with small discrepancies) in general.

※ High performing agencies: (2017) 48.5% (113/233 agencies) → (2018) 48.5% (131/270 agencies)

Low performing agencies: (2017) 17.6% (41/233 agencies) → (2018) 17.0% (46/270 agencies)

The number of agencies whose grade rose from last year stood at 72 (32.6%), and among them, 21 agencies (9.5%) saw a drastic rise in their grade by two or more notches, while the number of agencies whose grade declined from the previous year was 46 (20.8%). Out of them, 8 agencies (3.6%) experienced a decrease in their grades by two or more notches.

< Public Agencies with Improvements in Tiers/Grades>

It appeared that public agencies whose tiers/grades improved saw significant increases in their respective scores for most of the indicators of the AIA from the previous year. In particular, assessment indicators such as ‘the integrity improvement effect’ which reflects the extent to which the integrity tiers/grades of each agency has enhanced and ‘the promotion of public interest whistleblowing’ that assesses activities of each agency to promote compliance with the Improper Solicitation and Graft Act and the public interest whistleblowing system improved prominently regardless of the extent of enhancement of their respective tiers/grades.

According to the analysis, the major reason for grade improvement in the case of Chungnam University, Busan National Univ. Hospital and Busan Port Authority whose grade rose by three notches was that they remedied shortcomings of the government-led anti-corruption policies and expanded the civil society engagement to collect diverse opinions, while actively identifying the corruption-prone areas on their own and endeavoring to resolve their problems.

As for public agencies whose grade rose by two notches, it was found that ‘the integrity governance’ indicator which assesses the extent of facilitation of civil society engagement showed the biggest increase in the score, indicating that a majority of these agencies put in a lot of efforts to reflect various perspectives from outside into the internal anti-corruption initiatives.

In addition, 80 agencies which have established a solid foundation for the implementation of anti-corruption initiatives that are tailored to their respective circumstances and actively improved corruption-prone areas maintained grade 1 or 2 for two years in a row.

※ Agencies that maintained grade 1 or 2 for two consecutive years (80 agencies): Ministry of Health and Welfare, Ministry of Justice, Public Procurement Service, Busan Metropolitan City, Jeollanam-do Province, etc.

However, 15 agencies whose members are relatively indifferent and uncooperative to the anti-corruption works remained at grade 4 or 5 for the second straight year, showing that they need to further strengthen their voluntary anti-corruption efforts.

【Result of Assessment by Anti-Corruption Task】

Public agencies of various levels were found to have promoted diverse anti-corruption measures over the past one year in order to match up to the public expectations for ‘corruption-free Korea.’

In particular, they have made prominent efforts to strengthen communications with the public to reflect new points of views into their policies and to thoroughly analyze their corruption-prone areas, thereby devising tools for the prevention of corruption, while reinforcing their internal and external anti-corruption capacities to spread a culture of integrity throughout society.

<Anti-Corruption Efforts Based on Collaboration with the Public>

First, they held various local integrity culture festivals and introduced the citizen integrity auditor system in order to facilitate active, open communications and to help people have better understanding of and more interest in their various anti-corruption efforts.

In particular, the citizen integrity auditors have become an exemplary case of an effective anti-corruption policy based on public-private cooperation as they directly participated in the process of establishing implementation plans for anti-corruption initiatives of public agencies and exerted their authority to demand audits or make recommendations for institutional improvements to lead public agencies to address their corruption-prone areas.

However, there were a large number of public agencies that managed public-private partnerships through merely holding perfunctory meetings and one-time or for-show events, thus falling short of the public expectancy and failing to reflect stronger will of the people to participate in policy process.

<Institutionalized Integrity>

Moreover, public agencies of various levels institutionalized a system to pre-empt occurrence of corruption by actively discovering areas where people felt a great sense of loss or resentment such as hiring irregularities and power-tripping (abuse of power), etc. and came up with appropriate preemptive measures.

Notwithstanding several constraints, including deliberations of the National Assembly, securing of budget and conflicts among stakeholders, public agencies that have successfully conducted institutional improvements tasks recommended with regard to their corruption-prone areas exceeded that of last year by 12%p.*

* The percentage of public agencies that implemented recommended tasks for institutional improvements in areas susceptible to corruption: 63.8% in 2017 → 75.8% in 2018

On the other hand, public agencies reflected the newly revised Code of Conduct for Public Officials that has been more strengthened into their respective code of conduct, thereby establishing a system to prevent conflicts of interest of public officials, which contributes to improving a culture of the public sector.

In addition, pre-review of corruption-causing factors in laws and regulations have been undertaken. Central administrative agencies, upper- and lower-level local governments, and public service-related organizations have overhauled a total of 262 central laws/regulations, 83 local laws/ regulations, and 303 by-laws, respectively.

<Integrity in Practice>

In order to spread an anti-corruption atmosphere throughout agencies and prevent corruption from occurring, public agencies strengthened their voluntary efforts to conduct more stringent internal audit and inspection, ran customized anti-corruption campaigns or information activities for those in areas where corruption reports are frequent, and conducted anti-corruption promotional activities to target potential internal whistleblowers in order to contribute to facilitating corruption and public interest reports.

<Internalized Integrity>

Public agencies have established an environment for internalizing ‘integrity’ and making it every day practices by: running integrity education programs in which high-ranking officials can actively participate and take the initiative; utilizing internally-nurtured integrity lecturers to provide customized integrity education on an area-by-area basis; and establishing an anti-corruption system where every member of the organizations communicates and interacts with one another at all stages of integrity policy development.

<Spreading a Culture of Integrity>

Lastly, when public agencies assessed the credit ratings of private companies, they factored in whether the company leaders had commitments to ethical business management and whether corruption crimes occurred, thereby contributing to the proliferation of a culture of integrity.

Moreover, agencies developed best anti-corruption initiatives applicable to other agencies and spread such initiatives to the relevant agencies. Cooperative activities between best-performing agencies and those taking low places on the AIA have been also facilitated to contribute to improving the overall integrity levels of agencies

【Priority for 2019 AIA】

This year, the ACRC plans to include again low-performing public agencies and those where grand corruption scandals, such as hiring irregularities, took place in the list of agencies subject to the 2019 AIA so that these agencies vulnerable to corruption will put more extraordinary anti-corruption efforts.

In addition, with regard to public agencies that have been excluded from the list of target agencies on the AIA on the grounds of their size or situations, the ACRC will ease the criteria for those agencies to be included in the subject of the 2019 AIA or provide technical support for the upper-level agencies to evaluate the anti-corruption initiatives of their affiliated agencies, so that public agencies in the blind spot of the AIA can make more intensive autonomous efforts to prevent corruption.

Moreover, in order to draw up an anti-corruption assessment system in a way that lives up to people’s expectations, the ACRC will establish and manage a ‘deliberation committee for improving integrity level diagnosis and assessment systems’ where various stakeholders in the private sector including those from civil society organizations, academia and research institutions take part.

On the other hand, the ACRC will notify individual agencies of what they fall short of or need to further improve; continue monitoring and managing their follow-up measures so that their anti-corruption policies can be improved; listen to opinions on site by holding discussions and workshops with agencies subject to the AIA; and keep providing tailored support for public agencies with weak anti-corruption capabilities, including consulting and provision of examples of best initiatives.

The director general of the Anti-Corruption Bureau at the ACRC, Im Yoon Ju, said, “In 2019, we will do our utmost to ease the burden of target agencies and boost their anti-corruption policy performance to the extent that people can feel in their lives by improving the indicators of AIA in a way that they center on a few core anti-corruption tasks which can substantially enhance the integrity levels of public agencies.”