The Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) released the National Integrity Assessment Report 2019 on June 24. According to the report the National Integrity Score is 7.97, depicting a good level of integrity.
The National Integrity Assessment uses a scale from 0 to 10 where 0 is highly corrupt and 10 is very clean. According to ACC, the assessment is conducted on public agencies and services like Gewog, constitutional offices, Central schools and Dzongkhags among others. The agencies are selected based on vulnerability to corruption and importance to socio-economic development.
ACC said that while at the national level, the score indicates that efforts and initiatives undertaken by the public agencies to improve integrity are on track to achieve intended results. However, a deeper analysis of each component for NIA indicates room for improvement.
The Integrity score is measured by two components, external integrity and internal integrity. The Internal Integrity score is 7.98 and the External Integrity score is 8.08.
Kinzang Gyeltshen, NIA Coordinator said that the External Integrity score of 8.08 indicates a very good level of integrity. “This is mainly due to the improvement in the sharing of information and due to the new e-services platform.”
However, the report states that weak accountability culture in the form of public officials ignoring official duties, abuse of functions, and ineffective grievances redressal mechanisms require improvement.
The report also indicated a prevalence of the perception of corruption in the form of favouritism based on friendship and family relationships. 53 percent of service users believed that family and friendship are beneficial in having services processed faster while 41.69 percent of service providers believed that instruction from supervisors and friendship are the most influential factors in providing service faster.
In terms of Internal Integrity, the report said that while a score of 7.98 indicates a good level of integrity, however, Integrity Culture and Corruption Control Systems in terms of public officials ignoring official duties to pursue a private interest, protection of whistle-blowers, and disciplinary actions against wrongdoings were found as some of the shortcomings.
The assessment covered 11 different categories of agencies comprising 272 services from 96 agencies. A total of 13869 respondents including 9861 service users (External Clients) and 4008 service providers (Internal Clients) were covered.
335 complaints received by ACC in the 2018-2019 financial year were also analyzed.
With this assessment, the ACC expects to help bring systemic improvement and changes, in organisations to minimise any forms of corruption.
To enhance the utilization of the NIA 2019 results by the public agencies, ACC will be carrying out discussions on the findings and recommendations with the relevant agencies.
Samten Dolkar
