Activity Type: Research

Citizen Action Network for Accountability (CANA)

The Citizen Action Network for Accountability in the Philippines works to improve public services provided in our communities in general and to the poorest and most marginalized in particular.

CANA believes simply that more we ordinary people can understand and engage the government, the more accountable and effective we can all hold it to be.

Latest Work

Citizens force city to improve quality control of public works: A simple story on how citizen action compelled the government to repair a foot bridge previously declared complete yet unusable during rainy days.

Citizens encouraged to monitor government projects, spending: A national broadcast report in Filipino featuring CANA’s views and work in encouraging citizen action to fight corruption and demand for good governance.

Facebook: Citizen Action Net • Twitter: @CitizenActionPH

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Borde Político A. C. – Borde Jurídico

Founded in 2012,  Borde Político is a NGO created with the purpose of developing digital tools for monitoring the performance of the Mexican Congress.

Through this platform, citizens can better know the work of their representatives and find interactive tools designed to function as simple mechanisms for consulting, displaying or disseminate relevant information related to both Chamber of the Mexican Congress.

Since 2013, through a specialized project named Borde Jurídico, the transparency effort extended to observe the work of the Judiciary Branch.

Its team consists of 13 people, which includes political scientists, designers, lawyers, philosophers and programmers is dedicated to digitize, illustrate and make available, in real time, information generated in the Congress and the Supreme Court. The digital platforms developed by Borde Político aim to encourage citizen contributions and debate to political processes and legislation.

In addition, Borde Político is part of the Opening Parliament Alliance (Mexico) and has established important partnerships to work on matters of open budget and legislative budgets with renowned civil society organizations in Mexico such as Fundar and Métrica Pública.

Twitter: @bordepolitico /@bordejuridico • Facebook: Borde Político, Borde Jurídico • Youtube: Borde Político, Borde Jurídico

Fin al abuso (1st Campaign)

The project measures the amount of money annually stolen and diverted from education in Mexico, and holds a permanent campaign to advertise and display what could have been done in the education field in Mexico with the money that is lost to corruption. Additionally, “Fin al abuso” encourages citizens to join electronic campaigns and take legal action to demand that money spent on education is rightly used.

First campaign

Following up a three years movement named “Where is my teacher?”, Fin al abuso is leading a group of organizations demand for a single, complete and reliable registry of basic education teachers. The obligation to submit such registry was established in the enactment of the Mexican Federal Spending Decrees for 2010, 2011, and 2012; however, it does not exist so far.

Fin al Abuso, has detected (by name) 22,353 people, who are paid an income as teachers or principals, yet are not teaching. These people are the so-called “union commissioners” (UC) teacher union workers whose salaries cost Mexicans at least 1.7 billion pesos every year.

 Mexicanos Primero

“¡Fin al abuso!”  denounced this wrongdoing in 2012 and invited Mexicans to join the demand of more money to be allocated for education and less to be given to the Teachers Union.

The campaign collected signatures at public spaces, universities and forums; and had broad media presence in Mexico City, Tepic, Tijuana, Guadalajara and Monterrey.

In three months 230,240 citizens signed the campaign and 115 NGOs supported the initiative.

With each collected signature a letter demanding public resources to be well used was sent to the President of Mexico, the presidents of the Senate and House of Representatives, and the Ministers of Education and of Finance. If these Union Commissioners are essential to the SNTE (teachers’ union), then they should be paid from union dues deducted from teacher salaries. Those who signed received a reply from the federal authorities.

SEP (Secretariat of Public Education) and the SNTE reacted differing only in regards to the number of UC: SEP reported that there were “only” 12,704 commissioners whilst the SNTE admitted having over 160,000 commissioners.

In a second conference, Fin al Abuso published a document supported by the National Bar Association of Mexico (Ilustre y Nacional Colegio de Abogados de México) concluding that the payment of UC from the federal treasury is illegal.

 

 Twitter: @Finalabuso    •   YouTube: MexicanosPrimero  • Facebook: FinAlAbuso

Anti-corruption measures at the Naturalisation Board of Latvia in the process of acquisition of citizenship

The project consisted in training seminars and an analysis report. Its goals were to: identify specific corruption risks within the process of acquisition of citizenship, evaluate their occurring probability and their level of harmful effect; develop probable solutions and propose short and long term recommendations; sensitize and train the staff of the Naturalisation Board on the issues of corruption risks and their minimization.

Observation of administrative resource use before the 2005 local elections and the 2006 parliamentary elections

The project represents an analysis of how incumbents use the advantages they have as officeholders to either attract positive publicity for themselves or generate negative publicity for their opponents. The goal is to establish the facts which can then serve as a basis for programmatic action and public naming and shaming. The fieldwork is being done by volunteers. Examples: working visits before the election; the granting of benefits, bonuses to socially vulnerable groups; extensive public opinion polls just before elections, which at the same time contribute to raising awareness of different ministries, such as questionnaires giving information on curriculum.

Televised Municipal Debates

To support the democratic process and accountability in office, IASGAP performed all necessary research for municipal public debates between political parties one year after the elections to review promises made during the election campaign versus actual initiatives undertaken by winning candidates to fulfill these promises.

Access to justice: Introduction of the model “Legal assistance bureau”””

The project aimed to bring about a change in the regulation and grant people the right to receive legal assistance. Its main activities included: 1. data collection and analysis of the system for providing legal assistance by the officially appointed defense lawyers and attorneys; 2.qualitative and quantitative data accumulation and processing concerning the process of providing legal assistance in cases of defense provided by the state; 3. alternative model testing for providing legal assistance by the so-called Legal Assistance Bureau; 4. analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of the alternative methods for improving the quality of legal assistance and formulating a public policy by means of which an alternative can be applied.

Law-making process monitoring

This project, ‘Law-making process monitoring’, was initiated in 2006 by the Stefan Batory Foundation and Institute of Public Affairs (01.2006-12.2007). Thanks to the newly enacted in 2005 law on lobbing the NGOs and other organizations obtained an opportunity to monitor, follow more closely and also participate in legislative law-making processes. The engaged organizations monitored law projects with a significant impact on the anti-corruption sphere. The goal of this undertaking was twofold. On the one hand it intended to empirically appraise the possibility and effectiveness of the NGO participation in the legislative process. On the other hand, assessing the law making process transparency was envisaged.

Index V4

The primary aim of was to propose an innovative methodology for measuring an institution’s tendency towards corrupt behaviour and then use this methodology to investigate the level of corruption in the public administrations of the capital cities of the Visegrad 4 countries (CZ, SK, HU, PL). A comparative survey Index 4 was carried out in the capitals focusing on public procurement, internal audits, ethical codexes,conflict of interest and access to information. The results of the survey can be downloaded at http://www.transparency.cz/index.php?lan=cz&id=2500. The research into the level of corruption in the public administrations of the capital cities of the V4 served as a tool for putting pressure on political representatives. The project was a continuation of the efforts made in the project “A Corruption-Free Town Hall””.”

Corruption in the Process of Issuing Building Permits

The project represents a policy analysis of the process of issuing building permits. Formal standards, laws, and rules which regulate the receipt of building permits are unclear, contradictory, and at times even impossible to fulfill. At the same time, hardly any conflicts between the issuer and the recipient of a building permit are taken to court. Official arguments and differences of opinion are a very rare occurrence, and the question is why. The study offers an explanation – practice is regulated not so much by official rules, standards and legislation as by habit and a variety of corrupt practices to resolve or avoid disputes. The study is based on data compiled from surveys, observations, analysis of documents, interviews with experts, and focus-group discussions. The study maps the construction approval process.

Corruption – everyone loses

This initiative organized by Stowarzyszenie Instytut Nowych Technologii focused on raising social awareness about the corruption issues and simultaneously endeavored to diminish public acceptance of any form of corruption in the Łódzkie province. The organization applied means to both ridicule corruptive activities as well as spur a discussion about commonness of this phenomenon in Poland. The organizer intended to target different types of audience with this action and encourage reflecting on corruption. To achieve that, a light and fun-related form of the messages was chosen in order to appeal to the target groups.
During the action various measures were applied:
• Surveys of corruption perception in the Łódzkie province (some 750 respondents)
• Public debates devoted to anti-corruption issues, in which well known and popular celebrities (football players) as well as sociologic experts took part
• Workshops on ethical code of conduct for those groups, which were perceived in the survey as having the greatest exposure to corruption i.e. police, public officials, healthcare workers (high turnouts)
• Open space public happenings with an anti-corruption message (some 600 people)
• A family-oriented picnic with games and activities rising awareness of corruption issues (some 300 people)
• Final conference (with low participation rate)

Efficiency evaluation of the state budgetary process and its economic consequences

The project main objective is to make an evaluation of the procedures, related to the drawing up and spending the state budget and budget surplus, and to work out recommendations for enhanced transparency and efficiency of the budgetary process. Project implementation tools include: 1. expert studying of the budgetary process; 2. legal framework analysis; 3. of the practices for the last three years; 4. identification of strengths and weaknesses, threats and opportunities (SWOT analysis); 5. focus group, consisting of representatives of the executive power (Ministry of Finance, a Ministry, Agency for Economic Analysis and Forecasting, National Audit Office, a member of parliament); 6. drawing up recommendations for: legislative changes; improvement of the institutional coordination within the process; 7. conference presenting the results of the study and the recommendations on the budgetary process to interested persons and institutions.

Corruption as an election issue

A research on public opinion was conducted in September 2002. Its results were presented in the media. The project raised the public awereness about corruption, promoted important values of transparency and dedication in fighting the poverty, influenced political parties to pay attention to corruption issues in their activities. The project put pressure on non transparent politicians and their political parties and supported the implementation of the national anti-corruption strategy. This project also reinforced the civil society organisations’ role in fighting corruption as well as the role of Transparency International in the monitoring of political system in Bosnia.

Prosecution of corruption and other serious economic crimes

The project activities (an analysis) aimed to initiate a debate on usefulness of the introduction of special anti-corruption institutions that were established in Slovakia to the Czech environment. A study “How effective are the Czech and Slovak law enforcement agencies”” was published and a conference on prosecution of corruption in the Czech Republic and Slovakia took place.”

Investigation & Watchdog Activities

The stated objective of the project was to contribute little by little to a more transparent government (long term approach). Crucial policy areas in need of change were identified by the project (e.g. EU Funds, party-financing, conflict of interest legislation, public procurement) and malpractice and misuse were disclosed. The gathered data was then entered into a publicly accessible database: data on public administration (government, elected positions, advisors, managements of institutions) and the flows of public resources to the private sector (results of public procurement, state subsidies, tax and customs etc).

Regional support for the realization of the strategy for local self-governance

The goal of this bilateral project (between BIH and Serbia) was to (1) analyze the importance of decentralisation, especially the fiscal decentralisaton, governance, good quality management in local adminsitration, vertical and horizontal relations between local and other level of governance, as well as to analyze the level of cooperation betweeen local communities – after this analysis the goal was to (2) prepare and distribute the publication on good practices, challenges and experiences and to promote alternative steps towards decentralisation in BIH and Serbia.

Transparency of political party funding

A small research team from the Institute of Public Affairs (Instytut Spraw Publicznych) carried out an appraisal of financing of the political parties’ electoral campaigns. It was an in house research not related to any public campaign. They focused on official information provided by the parties to a governmental agency responsible for gathering such documents, which the parties are obliged by the law to deliver. Moreover, the team carried out in-depth interviews with or contacted via email/fax (one party and three main governmental controlling bodies) representatives of the political parties.
A project final output was a report on budgetary subsidies to political parties for running their electoral campaigns. The report was released at the press conference and was commented by all the major newspapers and on-line news portals as well as radio and TV news. It included a detailed analysis of a gathered material as well as recommendations aiming at enhancing transparency of the political party funding.
Goals of the project:
• assessment of corruption risks in the political party financing system
• enhancing the transparency of parties’ expenditure of budgetary subsidies
• civil society control of the party financing
• increasing public awareness of party financing system

Encouraging the effectiveness, efficient functioning and independence of the prosecutor’s office

The project objectives are: Identifying and formulating international standards and norms in regard to the prosecutor’s office. This includes the following: 1. operative standards by which the effectiveness of the prosecutor’s office can be judged; 2. standards regarding ethics and human rights by which the activities of the prosecutor’s office can be judged; 3. employing the existing mechanisms for ensuring the independence, efficient functioning and effectiveness of the prosecutor’s office, as well as finding out the best practices; 4. promoting debates about the need to reform the prosecutor’s office in Bulgaria and seeking methods for its better organization, effectiveness and efficient functioning; 5. turning the research into a reliable tool for making reforms. The tool itself should serve before the institutions which have tendencies towards reform and thus promote the debate concerning the prosecutor’s office in the countries which urgently need such changes.

Corruption Perception Study 2002

The Corruption Perception Study in Bosnia and Herzegovina is a comprehensive attempt of the non-governmental sector to establish the basic diagnosis of this acute social problem, and to create an instrument for its continuous monitoring. The result of the project was the creation of a database for the whole country, containing detailed information on sectors, level of government, institutions etc., where the citizens gave their judgment of the extent to which the corruption is rooted in the society, and their perception of the ways to confront it most efficiently. Publishing of the results, particularly during the pre-election period 2002., was part of the strategy employed by the Transparency International BiH (TI BiH), to point to those in power at their failures so far and impose the new agenda for the general elections and the wish of the citizens of BiH for their country to start introducing the rule of law, what had been awaited in vain for seven years now, since the cease of the war activities.

Transparency within the communication of the cities and municipalities

A questionnaire survey of 250 town halls and municipal offices was carried out and meetings of representatives of municipal offices with the public, local experts and interest groups in three localities were organised, analyzing the way how the town halls communicate with the citizens. The conclusions of the debate were embodied into recommednations for the town halls on how to improve the communication. The results of the project contributed to the creation of a Communication Manual for Local Municipalities that is available online at www.komunikujici-mesto.cz.

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