Understanding Success and Failure of Anti-Corruption Initiatives

This brief, published in the A4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre's U4 Expert Answer, looks at operational programmes and projects that are introduced to try to reduce corruption. It starts by exploring why most anti-corruption initiatives fail, citing "too great a mismatch between the expectations built into their design as compared to on-the-ground realities in the context of their deployment. Successfully implemented initiatives find ways to minimise or close these gaps."

The first issue tackled in the brief is: How can this gap be measured? The author offers a checklist of 7 "ITPOSMO" dimensions, which have been developed and tested on a series of cases in developing countries. They include: Information (both formal and informal), Technology (mainly information technology), Processes (from individual tasks to broader business processes), Objectives and values (covering formal strategies and personal goals, and the influence of informal institutional forces), Staffing and skills (the quantitative and qualitative aspects of competencies), Management systems and structures (the formal aspects of organisation), and Other resources. For each of the dimensions in turn, two things can be analysed: first, the reality relating to that dimension within the deployment context; and second, the assumptions and requirements relating to that dimension that are built into the initiative design. Any differences could be discussed qualitatively. But converting the assessed gap between design and reality on each dimension into a numerical rating can be used to guide risk assessment and change management for individual projects, or used to prioritise between different projects on the basis of risk. For example, a democracy initiative was proposed in West Africa with the intention of reducing fraud and making the electoral process more transparent; the gap between design and ex-ante (before the event) reality was analysed using the ITPOSMO dimensions, with the result as shown in Table 2 of the document.

Apart from measuring the gap, there is the matter of analysing the reasons behind it. The author explores that next. He describes the "externality of anti-corruption initiative designers", such as: "disciplinary externality" (when the designer is drawn from a different work domain to that of the main implementers, perhaps having a different educational background, a different departmental culture, even a different "language"); and "country externality" (when the design is taken from a different national context to that of the users).

Using the model summarised above, the author classifies anti-corruption initiatives as typically falling into one of the design-reality gap outcomes:

• Those that have a small design-reality gap right from the start: small risk of failure. "However, because the design is not very different from the pre-existing reality, it makes little change to that reality, and so has relatively little impact on corruption. For example, some Indian government e-transparency projects have merely automated a few parts of their existing service processes...Those projects worked...but they have made little difference to the number of citizens who must pay a bribe in order to get service..."
• Those that start with a large gap between design and reality. Achieving success will "almost certainly mean changing the reality to bring it closer to the design..." For example, anti-corruption reforms within Bolivia's National Tax Service involved ambitious reforms, requiring changes on all of the ITPOSMO dimensions in order to combat widespread fraud. "Steady changes over a number of years gradually closed the gaps by bringing reality in line with design expectations..."

The final section of this brief examines strategies for the successful design of anti-corruption initiatives. The importance of communication is highlighted in the following excerpt: "One key will be the extent to which designers are truly exposed to the realities of the deployment context." One example cited here involved the Sri Lankan State Accounts Department introducing what was intended to be a more transparent approach to publication of financial statements, enabled by the internet. Ensuring the long-term presence of design consultants working alongside departmental staff "enabled the designers to move beyond the 'discourse of rationality' to a closer contextual understanding. It also enabled greater staff participation in processes of design and implementation."

In concluding, the author notes that, when closing the design-reality gap, "all the ITPOSMO dimensions are important. But six of them - ITPSMO - are largely technocratic matters....The middle 'O' dimension [Objectives and values (covering formal strategies and personal goals, and the influence of informal institutional forces)] - which encompasses both politics and culture - is...most important; explaining why so much attention has recently been paid to the acknowledgement, analysis and handling of politics and culture in anti-corruption initiatives...Closing design-reality gaps in relation to these will, above all, unlock the door to success."