ACRC announced 2020 Anti-corruption Initiative Assessment

- Public organizations making active anti-corruption efforts, from establishing anti-corruption plan, making improvement on vulnerable areas, and to implementing the anti-corruption plan as planned, received higher scores in the Integrity Assessment -

January 26, 2021

Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission

The Republic of Korea

On 26 January, the ACRC announced 2020 Anti-Corruption Initiative Assessment (AIA) results in Grade 1-5 conducted for 263 public agencies, including central government agencies, local governments, and public service-related organizations.

Since 2002, the ACRC has conducted the AIA, along with the Integrity Assessment (IA), to assess public organizations’ anti-corruption policy efforts and effectiveness, using them to guide public organizations to carry out their anti-corruption reforms.

The 2020 AIA results showed that agencies that actively carried out anti-corruption policies and therefore got higher scores had significantly higher scores in 2020 IA announced in December last year.

*AIA rankings: offices of education > central administrative agencies > upper-level local governments > lower-level local governments

*IA score increase: offices of education (+0.45) > central administrative agencies (+0.31) > upper-level local governments (+0.28) > lower-level local governments (+0.03)

This indicates that public organizations better performing in the AIA carried out various anti-corruption efforts, such as establishment of anti-corruption policy implementation plan, removal and reduction of corruption-causing factors in vulnerable areas, and dissemination of anti-corruption achievements, which led to the improvement of their actual integrity level.

By grade groups, among the 263 organizations assessed, 39.5 %, or 104, were recognized as best performing agencies with 29 getting Grade 1 and 75 getting Grade 2. Among these high performing agencies, 64 institutions, such as Ministry of Justice, Daegu Metropolitan City, Daejeon Metropolitan Office of Education, and Korean Workers’ Compensation & Welfare Service, got Grade 1 or 2 for the second consecutive years.

The total average score of the assessed agencies was 82.5 out of 100. Metropolitan and provincial offices of education earned the highest score (89.7 points), followed by central administrative agencies (86.5 points), public service-related organizations (86.1 points), and upper-level local governments (84.5 points). However, more rigorous anti-corruption efforts would be needed by lower-level local governments (79.1 points), universities (77.3 points), and public health organizations (72.4 points).

For the results by assessment sections, public organizations last year earned higher scores in ‘operation of corruption-prevention system’ such as by conducting more integrity educations for their head and senior officials and expanding pre-monitoring on the code of conduct violation despite the COVID 19 circumstances.

However, more efforts were found to be needed when it comes to ‘anti-corruption policy achievements’ such as implementation of anti-corruption action plan for each agency.

ACRC Anti-Corruption Vice Chairperson Lee Geon-lee said, “In this COVID 19 era, the ACRC will pursue stronger anti-corruption measures to fully achieve the anti-corruption reform of the Moon Jae-in administration in its fourth year.”

He added, “We need efforts of public agencies of each level to improve integrity level in the public sector.”

As for the results by type of public institutions, the institution types that have higher scores in the Anti-corruption Initiative Assessment (AIA) recorded higher growth in the score of 2020 Integrity Assessment for public institutions.

This is because the types of public institutions that achieve higher scores in the AIA were found to make a wide range of anti-corruption efforts, including faithful implementation of anti-corruption and integrity policies, which effectively increased the integrity level of the institution types.

The average score of all 263 public institutions that were assessed in 2020 was 84.1 while municipal and provincial education offices (89.7 points) having the highest score. It was followed by central administrative agencies (86.5 points), organizations related to public service (86.1 points), and regional governments (84.5 points). Local governments (79.1 points), universities (77.3 points), and public medical institutions (72.4 points) that came in next were found to require more efforts.

In the result of assessing seven tasks in total, the score of "operating an anti-corruption system" (96.8 points) that includes completing integrity education courses was the highest.

Although "efforts to spread anti-corruption initiatives" recorded the lowest score among tasks in the last year, it made a remarkable progress (76.1 points in '19 → 90.7 points in '20 (+14.6)) by having the second highest score this year thanks to the strengthened indicators of the spread of best practices by public institutions.

In the Assessment, 39.5% or 104 institutions that include 29 institutions in Grade 1 and 75 institutions in Grade 2 were evaluated as excellent performers.

64 institutions have remained in either Grade 1 or 2 for two consecutive years, which includes the Ministry of Justice, Daegu Metropolitan City, Suwon City of Gyeonggi Province, Daejeon Metropolitan Office of Education, and Korea Workers' Compensation & Welfare Service.

61 institutions (25.0%) received a higher grade in the assessment compared to 2019 among which 19 of them (7.8%) rose by two grades or more in the rank. 3 institutions, such as Korea Coast Guard, received three higher grades while 16 institutions, including North Chungcheong Province, achieved two higher grades.

Public institutions at all levels were found to carry out a variety of anti-corruption efforts in order to increase South Korea's integrity level.

(Building a transparent society) All 263 institutions that were evaluated in the Anti-Corruption Initiative Assessment made efforts to improve areas chronically vulnerable to corruption in the public administration by analyzing and improving on vulnerable areas identified in the Integrity Assessment results, or audit findings made by the Board of Audit and Inspection of Korea and higher-level authorities, considering the characteristics of each institution.

In addition, they completed the implementation of 8,199 institutional improvement tasks (79%) that the ACRC recommended as to unreasonable laws, regulations, systems, practices, among others that cause corruption, out of the total 10,383 tasks, which is a 12% increase in the implementation rate compared to the previous year.

Among the types of public institutions, central administrative agencies that the ACRC recommended large numbers of tasks related to major policies completed 999 (86.4%) out of 1,156 tasks in total with a 6.8% rise in the implementation rate year over year.

(Eliminating corruption-causing factors) Public institutions at all levels promoted the activities of Integrity Citizen Inspectors, which is a corruption control system where external specialists (those who have experience in professional fields, such as professors) monitor and investigate corruption-vulnerable areas in public institutions.

218 (85.2%) out of 256 institutions that adopted the Integrity Citizen Inspectors system prevented corruption from occurring and made the public administration more transparent and fair by accepting institutional improvement or audit advices of integrity citizen inspectors.

Furthermore, 91 bodies (69.4%) among 131 organizations related to public service eliminated or prevented corruption-causing factors or unfair practices in 191 regulations of the organizations, among which 110 cases were where an improvement was made on unfair work practices that were highly relevant to people's everyday life.

(Strengthening integrity capabilities) The ACRC built integrity capabilities required for an organization's leader by expanding integrity education for high-ranking officials, such as the head of an institution, in order to take action on and push forward with the creation of a culture of integrity in the public service.

The ACRC also progressively responded in quality and quantity to the demand of integrity education, which was increased as integrity education was made mandatory, by having public institutions at all levels to train qualified integrity education instructors.

The completion rate of integrity education courses of high-ranking officials rose by 5.8% from the previous year to 95.2%, and 236 public institutions (89.7%) trained 911 integrity education instructors.

Moreover, the ACRC laid the foundation of implementing the Report of Outside Lectures, etc. to establish the system in the public sector as early as possible, by reflecting the change in the code of conduct regarding the Report of Outside Lectures, etc. by Public Officials system into 262 institutions' (99.6%) own Codes of Conduct.

(Outcomes of integrity initiatives) As public institutions made various efforts in analyzing corruption-vulnerable areas for each organization, and carried out anti-corruption and integrity initiatives that are fitted to the characteristics of each institution, in the 2020 Integrity Assessment, 196 (74.5%) out of 263 institutions received Grade 2 or above in terms of the Comprehensive Integrity Level, or higher scores compared to the previous year.

Furthermore, public institutions at all levels carried out 5,767 (99.6%) anti-corruption implementation plans on schedule and without a hitch among a total of 5,789 plans that were developed in line with major anti-corruption national agenda to contribute to the establishment of a government-wide anti-corruption system.

(Spreading a culture of integrity) As all players in the society, including the public sector, private sector, and civil society took an active role in the Transparent Society Pact, which is a commitment of taking action to address anti-corruption and integrity issues, the public-private partnership was promoted as in the case where 212 (94.2%) out of 225 public institutions that joined the Transparent Society Pact implemented the Pact.

In keeping up with the changes in the environment, such as the spread of COVID-19, they aggressively carried out 6,497 activities to spread a culture of integrity throughout the private sector via YouTube, blogs, and other non-face-to-face means.

In addition, 238 (90.5%) out of 263 institutions shared anti-corruption information, such as best anti-corruption initiatives, with other institutions or citizens to have public agencies utilize them in their anti-corruption efforts and engage the people in the public administration.