Key Lessons in Accountability

During the first day of the accountability presentations at the symposium, a number of key lessons emerged throughout the session and as a result of the group work activities. These lessons centered on:

• The need to acknowledge that corruption is not just a developing country phenomena. Its affects all countries. But there are differences in the types, levels and impacts of corruption. We need to be especially concerned were corruption impacts on delivery of basic services to the poor. Poor people should be protected from corruption.

• The need to be careful in collecting cost information. The manipulation of such information is a common practice (and fraud). Procedures to collect such information can be designed to try and minimize manipulation (e.g. in Colombia).

• Applying methodologies - we now have methodologies to apply a positive agenda of promoting transparency and accountability. When accountability is weak we see the problems e.g. only 30% of systems in Timore Leste fully functioning after one year.

• Benchmarking as the practice can create incentives to manipulate information even more, and they have the possibility to do so. All such exercises, target setting etc have to be very carefully thought through.

It also became apparent that given the important roles they play, regulators need to be shielded from corruption (regulatory capture...anti-corruption in regulation). But regulatory activities are also important in preventing corruption (anti-corruption through regulation).