Benchmarks for Integrity: Tracking Trends in Governance

The OECD, via its Ethics Infrastructure concept and Integrity Assessment Framework, is in the forefront as efforts to check corruption shift from diagnosing problems and prescribing countermeasures to the institutionalization and assessment of integrity. In such an effort OECD possesses significant resources: a generation’s worth of anti-corruption expertise; unparalleled networks, information and data resources; and strong credibility based both on anti-corruption and integrity instruments (such as the OECD Convention on Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions, 1998 OECD Recommendation on Improving Ethical Conduct in the Public Service and the 2003 Recommendation on Guidelines For Managing Conflict Of Interest in the Public Service) and a half-century of effective dealings with the world’s major economies. But it also faces significant challenges, made all the more difficult by the fact that in some ways it is venturing into unknown territory. A key challenge is to assess anti-corruption progress in valid, reliable, and reasonably precise ways, using objective evidence to provide credible, easily understood feedback and guidance to officials, reform groups, and citizens...