Civil Society Session 1: Improving Mechanisms of Control

Welcome to the session on civil society's role in controlling corruption in the public arena. The existence of this session is evidence of progress in and of itself. As all of you in this room know, fifteen years ago the word "corruption" was unmentionable in the hallways of government across the world. Today, political will to address these vital, but sensitive, subjects is on the rise. Corruption has become central in political party platforms across the region, and governments are increasingly promoting initiatives to increase transparency. These initiatives range from freedom of information legislation to anti-corruption commissions to ombudsman offices that monitor corruption allegations.

Governments in every region have demonstrated that, where there is a will to combat corruption, there is a way.

For example, last year in Nigeria, the Minister for Public Reform -- in an interesting twist -- abolished his own department when he discovered that 5,000 of the 25,000 workers of his payroll were "ghost workers." That is, 5,000 workers were being paid a regular salary even though they never came a single day to work.

In Azerbaijan, to address rampant corruption in the higher education admissions system, the government took away control over admissions from the universities and created the State Students Admissions Committee to oversee the admissions process. This reform is created with a significant reduction of corruption levels in the admissions process.

In Indonesia, the involvement of local parent associations in determining how community-generated funds will be used is minimizing corruption in the local school system. At the beginning of every school year, school officials meet with representatives of the parent association to together plan how community funds will be used. Access to school expenditure reports allows the parent associations to continue to monitor spending throughout the year.

In Uganda, the government commissioned an audit of the education system that revealed expenditure leakages of over eighty percent of the national budget for textbooks and supplies. Only thirteen percent of these funds were actually getting to the schools that desperately needed them. To address this, the government began to require that all fund transfers to district education offices be broadcasted on the radio and published in local newspapers, and that schools post public notices of all the funds they received. The results were remarkable. Within three years, ninety percent of these funds were reaching schools.

What these examples demonstrate is that governments cannot, and have not, succeeded in addressing corruption on their own. Civil society, in all of its manifestations -- nongovernmental organizations, citizen groups, labor unions, business associations, media, faith-based groups, and academia -- has proven indispensable in the fight against corruption. The rise of international organizations such as Transparency International -- one of the co-sponsors of this conference with its 100-plus national chapters; national organizations like the Institute for Democracy for South Africa and Indonesia Corruption Watch; and local organizations such as parent associations and neighborhood committee are all clear examples of the enormous potential of civil society to lead the fight against corruption by raising public awareness, representing and mobilizing citizens, pressuring governments to reform, and implementing activities on the ground to mitigate corruption.

The role of civil society in a democracy cannot be overemphasized. Civil society is the lifeblood of a nation. Civil society participation increases the effectiveness and efficiency of policy implementation and makes democracies more pluralistic, representative, and responsive.

Civil society has played a critical role in democracies across the world before, during, an after the transition to democratic rule. In the region that I am most familiar with -- Latin America and the Caribbean -- hundreds of thousands of citizens gave their lives in the struggle to leave a more democratic world behind. They succeeded, largely due to the persistent efforts of various civil society elements, such as the church, in mobilizing citizens and the world to take on the brutal dictatorships. In the former Soviet republics, civil society -- especially the media -- continues to lead the battle against corruption by surfacing stories of corruption, fraud, and other official wrongdoing and, in many cases, rising their lives in the process. In the older democracies across the world, sophisticated civil societies continue to scrutinize the conduct and decisions of government officials to hail them accountable for their actions.

Civil society serves many influential roles vis-a-vis government -- observer, challenger analyst, community liaison, overseer, critic, and ally. The challenge for governments is to void immediately casting civil society aside as the opposition, and instead recognize that a sophisticated civil society can be an ally and partner of government. Civil society can mobilize society in ways that governments cannot, raise public awareness about corruption and government efforts to address it, and ensure the representation and buy-in of diverse interests in society.

Civil society, as the voice of the people, is in the best position to identify and communicate the needs and preferences of citizens to government.

In Bangalore, India, the Public Affairs Center, a not-for-profit organization committed to improving the quality of governance in India, has pioneered the development of a "citizen report card" model, in which the public assigns grades to local public services. As a result, statistics reveal that corruption levels in routine transactions have gone down and public satisfaction with service delivery has increased. The Bangalore experience has shown us that the process of engaging citizens in the governance process is as important as the results achieved by this collaboration. All of the service delivery improvements in Bangalore have corresponded with increased satisfaction with the behavior of local service providers.

Civil society's monitoring and oversight functions are fundamental to guaranteeing that government is serving the interests of its citizens and to ensuring that they have access to information that will help them understand and evaluate government decisions. For example, in Colombia, USAID has supported veedurias, or citizen oversight committees, which equip and empower citizens to monitor government processes and service delivery.

These citizen oversight groups are making government at all levels more open, lawful at accountable, and responsive.

Although tension often exists between governments and civil society, governments do have an important role in empowering civil society. The legitimacy of governments is derived from the governed. Only if governments are accountable to democratic oversight and respectful of the rule of law can governments claim to act on behalf of the people. It is this legitimacy which gives governments the authority and the capacity to implement successful anti-corruption reforms and that generates support from society for these reforms.

Governments offer, above all, political leadership. Governments should be proactive in setting the agenda and framework through which to engage civil society in the battle against corruption. This includes creating the enabling legal and regulatory environments in which civil society can function, and providing appropriate financial incentives, such as tax breaks and tax exemptions for donations, to help civil society organizations mobilize funding. Similarly, it is incumbent upon governments to transcend the historical mutual distrust between government and civil society and set a collaborative and productive tone for the dialogue with civil society. In the Philippines, Procurement Watch -- a not-for-profit organization -- has partnered with the government to advance much needed procurement reforms to improve accountability, efficiency, and equal opportunity in the public procurement system. Procurement Watch worked with other civil society elements to develop a reform strategy to present to the Government, which was welcomed by the Government. A Procurement Watch representative recognized the importance of collaboration between civil society and the government when she remarked, "Procurement reform requires technical competence found in a combination of people in and out of government. It is vital that they can complement each other's unique contributions. People in government should know when the expertise required is beyond them. People out of government should appreciate the fact that there are many well-meaning people in government. A network of like-minded individuals is priceless. While technical expertise is certainly needed, understanding the cultural context and the society process of change may be just as decisive and will require a different type of expertise."

The truth is that I don't need to explain the importance of civil society's role in addressing corruption to all of you here today. You are all here because you understand this already -- you are the champions against corruption in your countries, as are our three panelists.