The Committee of Experts that plays a key role in the assessment of the implementation of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption (hereinafter, the IACAC) was established by the members of the Organization of American States (OAS) to exercise technical monitoring of the fulfillment of the Convention. In its meetings held twice a year with the participation of representatives of anti-corruption agencies and international and regional organisations, the Committee reviews and adopts country reports and discusses various acute anti-corruption matters and good practices of the States parties to the IACAC.
The regular 38th meeting reviewed the draft implementation reports of Panama, Chile and Salvador and explored the best practices of some countries of the region in the anti-corruption area. Particular attention was paid to transparency of public bodies and anti-corruption training.
Transparency
The Ministry of Justice and Institutional Transparency of Bolivia (Ministerio de Justicia y Transparencia Institucional Bolivia) presented the System of Public Accountability (Sistema de Rendición Pública de Cuentas), a portal that provides the general public with full access to information about the activities undertaken by the public (local) bodies, State-owned enterprises etc., including data about the employment of public assets, procurement, scheduled inspections, ongoing public projects and benefits for the citizens.
The representative of the Transparency Secretariat (Secretaría de Transparencia) of Colombia spoke about the Interinstitutional Network for Transparency and Anti-Corruption (Red Interinstitucional de Transparencia y Anticorrupción – RITA). This platform contains information about corruption cases detected in 103 public (local) bodies and State-owned enterprises also thanks to the reports of violations made by citizens.
Training and awareness-raising
The event included a dedicated session on “Anti-Corruption Training and Educational Programmes” (Programas de capacitación y educación en anticorrupción) where anti-corruption educational initiatives targeted at civil servants and the general public were presented. These projects are implemented by:
- the OAS School of Governance;
- the International Anti-Corruption Academy;
- the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime;
- the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development;
- the American University Washington College of Law and others.
In this session, some countries also made reports. In particular, the representatives of the Anti-Corruption Bureau of Argentina (Oficina Anticorrupción, hereinafter, the Bureau) presented the National Training Programme on Integrity and Transparency (Programa Nacional de Capacitaciones en Integridad y Transparencia) implemented at all levels of public administration (Administración Pública Nacional) and involving:
- the development of open courses at the training portal of the National Institute of Public Administration (Instituto Nacional de Administración Pública) targeted at civil servants and employees of State-owned enterprises;
- the development of courses and other educational and awareness-raising projects for specific bodies taking account of the specific characteristics of their activities.
The Programme also implies the training of integrity and transparency curators whose duties will be focused on the dissemination of information about the relevant courses and other materials and organisation of awareness-raising events across the country.
Other business
Besides the topics mentioned above, the meeting reviewed some other initiatives of the States parties to the Convention.
The delegation from Argentina presented the Monitoring system for private and public activities of senior officials before their appointment and after the termination (Sistema de Monitoreo de Actividades Privadas y Públicas Anteriores y Posteriores al Ejercicio de la Función Pública – MAPPAP). The system, based on the declarations, gathers information about the interests in the private sector officials had within three years before the appointment and those that appeared within one year after the termination, which allows monitoring the compliance of the individuals who hold (held) the positions at the level of deputy minister and higher with the conflict-of-interest prevention requirements.
The Comptroller General of the Republic of Chile (Contraloria General De la República) told the participants about the plans to establish a Technical Commission on Fighting Transnational Corruption (Comisión Técnica de Lucha contra la Corrupción Trasnacional) aimed at coordinating the anti-corruption efforts of the members of the Organization of Latin American and Caribbean Supreme Audit Institutions.
