Ecuador SinCero – Corruption Prevention, Transparency and Citizen Participation
Context
Ecuador has signed the most important international agreements on anti-corruption, transparency and social participation, such as the Alliance for Open Government (OGP for its acronym in English: Open Government Partnership) and the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) as well as other important regional conventions. The Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador enshrines the principle of a corruption-free society. The Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda were also included in the goals of the national development plan “A Whole Life 2017-2021” (Plan Nacional de Desarrollo – Toda Una Vida 2017-2021), in particular goal 7 (social participation) and 8 (transparency and anti-corruption). In addition, some other important laws and public and private policies to fight corruption and promote transparency and participation in society have been enacted.
Despite these efforts, corruption remains endemic in Ecuador. Citizens‘ trust in state institutions is very low. The few existing indices on the perception of the population suggest that more than 56% of civil servants and politicians would be corrupt. At the same time, there is a high level of tolerance for corruption among the population. Additionally, corruption in Ecuador leads to discrimination in access to public services in favor of those who can influence the authorities, the opportunities for non-state actors to actively participate in political events and thus have a positive influence on the effective prevention of corruption remain limited and there is still little participation from the private sector, civil society and academic actors in the formulation of normative and regulatory frameworks, and in the planning, application and control of public policies, particularly in the area of anti-corruption.
Project description
In this context, the objective of the programme Ecuador SinCero is to create preconditions for preventing corruption in accordance to standards of international organization and initiatives. Described in four outputs the programme seeks:
- to strengthen the institutional capacities of state and non-state actors to prevent corruption;
- to strengthen the capacities of state and non-state actors to implement the open government approach regarding transparency, participation and accountability at national and sub-national level;
- the generation of data and information as an important prerequisite for the implementation of measures to prevent corruption;
- to improve the prerequisites for the strategic competence development of state and non-state actors in the areas of integrity and transparency.
Good Governance and Civil Society
Client: GIZ
Period: 12.2021 – 03.2023
Country: Ecuador
Services
AMBERO is responsible for the successful management of a pool of short-term and long-term experts to provide technical services according to the project-specific needs. The services to be provided under include measures for human capacity development as well as organisational and strategic advice in the following thematic areas:
- Public policy on public integrity and open government, for example, supporting the formulation of public integrity strategies, or open government plans;
- Mechanisms of digital democracy and civic technologies, for example, to improve transparency and access to information, social control, and accountability;
- Gender mainstreaming, human rights, and environmental approaches, though, for example, laboratories, observatories or public-societal research spaces or whistleblowing mechanism in the case of sextortion;
- Citizen innovation in the public sector, for example, in terms of regulatory improvement, simplification of procedures and improvement of services, and as a mechanism for generating economic value through open data;
- Strengthening of institutional and individual capacities, for example, of civil society, the private sector, academia, the public sector, opinion makers in matters of corruption prevention, integrity and transparency;
- Generation of data, statistics, and information: i.e. the elaboration of transparency, corruption, and integrity indices, or “behavioural insights”.