ACRC Adds Criteria for Conflict of Interest
to the Integrity Assessment of Public Organizations This Year

- The commission will deduct points for sexual misconduct of high-ranking officials in relation to their duty -

(27th July 2021, ACRC)

In this year’s integrity assessment of public offices, the ACRC will add various items related to the conflict of interest of public officials, including the pursuit of personal interest by taking advantage of internal information, and it will deduct points in the assessment for sexual misconduct of high-ranking officials in relation to their duty.

This is intended to strengthen integrity assessment to eradicate recent moral hazard in public organizations as part of the efforts for the Ten Anti-Corruption and Integrity Innovation Initiatives established in April.

The Anti-Corruption & Civil Rights Commission (Chairperson: Jeon Hyun-Heui, ACRC) announced the ‘Plan for 2021 Public Agency Integrity Assessment’ and will implement a large-scale survey of 200,000 people, including public officials and citizens who experienced services from public agencies, from next month to November.

Considering recent events, such as LH real-estate speculation scandal and enactment of Act on the Prevention of Conflict of Interest in Public Office, the commission conducts assessment with various new criteria related to conflict of interest of public officials, namely pursuing personal interest of public officials using confidential or undisclosed information obtained in performing their duty, exerting unjustifiable influence of retired public officials, and effectiveness of the systems preventing conflict of interest in each organization.

Also, items will be added to assess corruption caused by abuse of power of public officials that citizens experienced. Together with this, from this year the commission will deem sexual misconduct of high-ranking officials, including heads of organizations, as a corruptive behavior and deduct points in the integrity assessment.

The ACRC will expand the scope and items for deducting points. For instance, for those organizations that had corruption cases causing social criticism as high-ranking officials are involved or multiple members in such organizations are systematically involved; or those organizations that had insufficient internal audit and many corruption cases were found by external organizations, the commission will deduct additional points through the qualitative assessment.

After completing the survey and assessment of corruptive cases to measure integrity of public offices from next month to November, the ACRC will announce the outcome with the level of integrity for individual agencies in December.

Integrity Assessment of Public Offices diagnoses the level of integrity in public offices by combining the outcome of the survey of public officials and citizens who experienced public service with the corruption cases took place in the organizations. The ACRC has measured and disclosed the levels of integrity of individual public agencies since 2002.

This year, the subjects of the integrity assessment are in total 708 public agencies, including central and local administrative agencies, offices of education, public service-related organizations, local councils, national and public universities, and public medical institutions.

In particular, this year the ACRC is implementing a reform to create a comprehensive assessment system for the level of integrity by combining the anti-corruption policy evaluation which examines anti-corruption efforts of organizations with integrity assessment that the commission has been implementing for the last 20 years.

Director-General Sam-seok Han of Anti-Corruption Bureau of the ACRC said, “this year, there were incidents that tarnished national trust towards public offices. Therefore, it is all the more important to tighten discipline in public offices.” He added, “agencies in various levels will strengthen anti-corruption policies further more to prevent and eradicate indiscipline and corruption. To this end, the commission will improve integrity assessment system.”