Social Development and Public Governance > State, Governance and Civil Society
Global Integrity Indicators
The Global Integrity Index provides detailed data and comparative country-by-country assessments of the mechanisms in place to prevent abuses of power and promote public integrity. Building on its 2004 report, which covered 25 countries, Global Integrity aims to expand its expert network and coverage to at least 100 countries in 2006 to begin producing on an annual basis, for each country, the more than 290 Integrity Indicators, accompanied by qualitative reporting from leading journalists, as well as an overall Global Integrity Index ranking all countries covered.
Given the highly specified and transparent nature of the assessments, the Global Integrity indicators and indices hold the potential to be more useful than many existing survey-based corruption indices in diagnosing particular governance challenges and identifying specific areas for policy interventions.
In-country teams of independent social scientists and investigative journalists report on the existence and effectiveness of mechanisms for preventing abuses of power and promoting public integrity and the accessibility of governmental information. Rather than trying to measure actual corruption, Global Integrity quantitatively measures the opposite of corruption; that is, the access that citizens and businesses have to a country's government, their ability to monitor its behavior, and their ability to seek redress and advocate for better governance. The Integrity Indicators break down these aspects of public integrity into numerous categories, indicators and sub-indicators, entailing detailed assessments of public procurement practices, civil service regulations, anti-corruption laws, electoral rules and other pertinent areas.
Nathaniel Heller is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Global Integrity, a non-profit, non-partisan organization based in Washington DC. As a senior associate and James R. Soles Fellow at the Center for Public Integrity from 1999-2002, Nathaniel Heller, along with Chuck Lewis and Marianne Camerer, first developed the Integrity Indicators and conceptual model for what is now Global Integrity. He served at the U.S. State Department from 2002-2005.
Last updated: 03/27/07
