Argentina’s Laura Alonso on Fighting Corruption
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Bibliographic details
- Published: September 1, 2018
Scope of corruption
- Risk zones historically: big infrastructure works, extractive industries, and customs.
- Measures pursued: lower the risk, increase control and transparency of procurement and contracting processes, monitor the behavior and assets of public officials, and strengthen internal audit systems.
Poverty and corruption
- Core finding: People living in poverty are first victims of corruption because corruption, inefficiency, and poor administration produce low-quality public services and infrastructure investment, directly affecting quality of life.
- Additional effects: corruption deprives the poor of new employment opportunities by deterring quality private investment.
Private sector involvement
- Recommended role: adopt good business practices and report irregularities in public procurement or contract negotiations.
- Public-private partnership example: anti-corruption office launched a high-level reporting mechanism with technical advice from the OECD and the Basel Institute on Governance.
- Outcome cited: during the first public-private partnership project of the National Directorate of Roads, eight contracts were signed and no reports of corruption were recorded; integrity clauses and the reporting mechanism helped generate investor trust, including foreign investors.
Technology, data, and administrative modernization
- Prior state: administration was far behind in matters of technology.
- Reforms and tools:
- Creation of the Modernization Ministry and incorporation of electronic files enabling electronic management of most internal administrative procedures.
- Remote procedures accelerated customs-clearing and allowed better oversight.
- Presidential decree launched reform of electronic files and implementation of a broad open-data and open-government policy.
- Work on interoperability of state-owned databases to enable cross-checks, statistics, and broader oversight.
- Access and scale:
- Anti-corruption office access expanded from none to over 15 databases.
- Public access: data catalogs and datasets posted on www.datos.gob.ar, including affidavits of the 45,000 executive branch civil servants who declare assets and financial interests; mining, gas and petroleum exploitation data; population and education data; public health and economy data.
- Argentina publishes a big part of asset-declaration information openly, updated annually.
Institutional reforms and measurement of success
- Multi-front strategy: administrative, operational, executive, and legislative reforms to guarantee sustainability of small and big reforms.
- Implementation challenges: rapid changes such as electronic files required training tens of thousands of public servants and coordination with provincial administrations and judicial authorities.
- International cooperation: participation in the OECD public integrity officers group and chairing the Group of 20 anti-corruption group.
- Success metrics articulated by Alonso:
- Continuous and sustainable reforms, implemented across federal administration, judicial branch, provinces, and municipalities.
- A 10-year horizon: if the agenda of big and small reforms is kept throughout the coming 10 years, that would be the measure of success for this phase.
Upcoming plans
- A national anti-corruption plan for the next five years is being prepared to involve all government areas and ministries, with sectoral policies and participation from key decentralized agencies such as the Social Security Administration, Tax and Customs agencies, and the agency regulating food and medicine quality in Argentina.
Source: F&D Magazine, The Poverty-Corruption Nexus, September 2018 — interview conducted June 22.
Content in this bundle
- ثنائية الفقر والفساد
- EN LAS TRINCHERAS — El nexo entre la pobreza y la corrupción
- Pauvreté–corruption, liaisons fatales
- The Poverty- Corruption Nexus
- На передовой. Связь между бедностью и коррупцией – Финансы и развитие – сентябрь 2018 года
- 贫穷与腐败的关联 - 前 沿 - 《金融与发展》- 2018年9月号·第55卷·第3期 - 国际货币基金组织季刊