Who is measuring corruption?

Many countries have strengthened their national legislation to detect, investigate, and punish corruption. Anti-corruption efforts have also expanded beyond legal frameworks to include national policies. These government initiatives have been supported by civil society, academia, the private sector, and investigative journalists, who have all pushed for anti-corruption issues to be included in public debates and government decisions. However, we still know little about how effective these anti-corruption policies are, mainly due to a lack of rigorous evidence.

Despite living in an age of rapid technological advancement and artificial intelligence, we do not have reliable data and systems to track corruption. There are hundreds of efforts to measure corruption – from well-known global initiatives such as the Corruption Perceptions Index and Control of Corruption Indicator, to national surveys that assess the corruption experiences of citizens and businesses – and countless studies by think tanks and researchers. While these efforts are valuable, they fall short of providing a consistent and comprehensive measurement of corruption. One of the main challenges is that these initiatives use different definitions, methods, and data sources, making it difficult to integrate and analyse corruption effectively.

Helping countries measure corruption

Article 61 of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) refers to the collection, exchange, and analysis of information on corruption. UNCAC suggests that each country should analyse corruption trends and circumstances where crimes occur. UNCAC calls for:

1. Developing and sharing statistics
2. Common definitions, standards, and methodologies
3. Information on best practices to prevent and combat corruption
4. Monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of anti-corruption policies

It is nearly 20 years since UNCAC came into force. In 2023, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) published a reference framework to facilitate UNCAC’s recommendations on the collection, analysis and dissemination of data on corruption trends, the associated risks, and the effectiveness of government responses.

UNODC serves as UNCAC’s secretariat, advising countries and monitoring how they advance UNCAC’s implementation. Between 2021 and 2023, UNODC conducted three global consultations to fulfil UNCAC’s article 61 and other resolutions of the Conference of the States Parties to UNCAC, and the Political Declaration of the Special Session of the General Assembly against corruption. Participants included 149 entities from 81 countries, international experts and specialists from 25 national statistical offices, 56 anti-corruption authorities, 25 criminal justice authorities, ministries, think tanks, academia, and civil society organisations. They discussed existing initiatives and assessed the relevance and feasibility of indicators that could be used to measure corruption.

Collaboration creates a framework for corruption measurement

The consultations resulted in UNODC’s statistical framework to measure corruption. The framework allows for a broad analysis by using different types of indicators, such as:

• Direct measurement of the experiences of corruption
• Indirect measures such as perceptions and corruption risk indicators (conditions that enable or deter corruption)
• De jure (existence of robust regulation)
• De facto (actual regulatory enforcement) indicators

Figure 1 shows the framework’s structure.

Figure 1: UNODC’s statistical framework to measure corruption

The main challenge in developing this statistical framework was to ensure an inclusive, comprehensive, realistic, and relevant approach. The rationale was to make sure that consultations were as open and inclusive as possible to give voice to different actors. Another difficult task was to review and distil the most relevant indicators to allow the most appropriate dimensions to be measured in accordance with UNCAC. It was important to gain feedback from national authority participants on the feasibility of collecting the data needed to estimate the framework’s indicators.

The framework includes 153 indicators that measure different aspects of corruption, its risks, and the actions governments take to prevent, investigate, and penalise corruption.

For example, to measure bribery, the framework proposes 14 indicators, including:

• Prevalence of bribery
• Perception of corruption
• Monetary value of this crime
• E-government coverage
• Existence of mechanisms to report bribery
• Robustness of the legal framework
• Actions by the criminal justice system
• Amount of assets recovered because of bribery

Analysing the framework’s indicators provides a comprehensive understanding of the scope, impact, and effectiveness of a country’s anti-bribery measures.

The framework was welcomed at the United Nations Statistical Commission and the UNCAC Conference of the States Parties in 2023. In 2024, UNODC continued to disseminate the framework in global, regional and national forums, and translated the document into the UN’s official languages. Using existing capacities, UNODC continues to provide technical guidance to experts interested in mapping existing data, however, additional resources are needed to develop full methodological guidance for countries to adopt the framework. National experts can start by using UNODC’s coordination mechanisms to do the heavy lifting of applying the statistical framework to produce their own indicators to measure corruption at the national level.

To advance the use of the statistical framework, the next step is to link it to UNCAC’s Implementation Review Mechanism. The collection of data according to more standardised indicators will bring a quantitative perspective to measuring the effectiveness of policies to prevent and combat corruption in a systematic way.

What is the future for the statistical framework?

In an ideal scenario, five years from now, we would see several countries with established coordination mechanisms overseeing the collection, integration, analysis, and dissemination of data to measure corruption at the national level. The agencies in charge of these mechanisms would meet regularly to review and discuss the information published on their national public digital platforms, as well as other relevant indicators. The national platforms would display the indicators from the statistical framework, selected by stakeholders based on the country’s anti-corruption priorities.

The main outcome of this coordination would be to assess the progress of national anti-corruption policies using the chosen indicators. New initiatives could also be recommended to advance efforts to prevent and combat corruption, including measuring corruption beyond Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 16.5.1 and 16.5.2 (see Measuring progress on Sustainable Development Goal 16.5 by Bonnie J. Palifka). The national platform’s focus on measuring corruption would ensure accountability and support decision-making based on high-quality, comprehensive, comparable, and timely data. There is a long way to go, but at least there is a good place to start.