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Institutional development is at the heart of TI Ukraine’s growth, as it ensures the success of all the other strategic priorities of the organization: prevention, punishment, and engagement in anti-corruption. It is about the growth and transformation of the team: both its members and tasks.

TI Ukraine’s Chief Operating Officer Anastasiia Mazurok has shared the main challenges and victories in the organization’s institutional development and shared her vision of the team’s role. She has been working with TI Ukraine to change the country for almost four years, and there is no one who can better tell about the organization’s transformations at various stages.

So, what was special about 2020, the year of the pandemic?

Adaptability is the new standard

Like the entire world, we faced Covid, which made us change, adapt, reorient, and accept the new reality as part of our lives. We stood our ground and maintained our momentum. Our efficiency has not dropped, it has even grown in some aspects. But we feel that every victory in 2020 is much more valuable than in other years.

We are running a marathon at the speed of a sprint

The gist of an organization is people. Our work depends to a greater extent on the political and legislative agenda. In a situation where these processes are chaotic and changeable, people often feel burned out, exhausted, hopeless. It is therefore critical for us to maintain a positive atmosphere in the team despite everything. These connections are essential for recuperation.

We kept doing our job even when these subjects were overshadowed by Covid-19

Monitoring the work of anti-corruption bodies and upholding the integrity of the anti-corruption infrastructure, monitoring legislative initiatives, amending laws, advocating for necessary changes, increasing transparency and accountability at the regional level—we kept doing all these things in spite of everything.

The civil society sector is not the opposition. It is an ally

Working in the third sector is different from activism. Our value is that we can speak professionally and honestly about positive and negative things alike. We are focused on balance and depth, but we remain flexible, since our primary goal is achieving results. This is where our true value lies.

Engagement ≠ mass effect

Engagement is one of our strategic priorities. In 2020, we realized that offline is not the only way to have people join the fight against corruption. We have found new ways, developed new tools. For example, we have developed a Covid-19 procurement map and an online map of school procurement, launched an online platform of City Transparency and Accountability, and more. Importantly, there is demand: people want to remain active, follow the situation in their country or community, and affect it.

We have grown stronger institutionally

And this is evidenced by the PACT Organizational Capacity Assessment. TI Ukraine scored 3.9 points out of 4 possible (compared to 2.8 in 2017). It is a world-renowned methodology for assessing the institutional sustainability of an organization and a clear proof that we are moving in the right direction.

The team has grown in numbers and in spirits

Another institutional victory of the year is 16 new team members. And growth is not just about the number of people here: we have become more “grown-up.” The organization rebooted and expanded. This year, we recruited people and organized onboarding fully online, which is a completely new experience. The pandemic taught us independence: say what you will, but the office gives us an illusion of control, and when all the employees are at home, they have to prioritize their assignments and make more decisions on their own.

People as a priority

In the new reality, we had to take a hard look at our basic values and understand how important they are among our team. We changed the formats of interaction, reoriented our plans, adapted to individual characteristics, schedules, life circumstances. And most importantly, we remained people, even in critical moments, work-related and otherwise.

True enthusiasm

We have an entire enthusiastic community in TI. Our team members truly care about what they do. They are interested in these issues at work and in their free time alike not because they have a task, but because they care about what is happening, and it is important for them to have an impact. We have learned that other people don’t feel “at home” with us, so they tend to leave us. The lack of hard skills is not as big a problem for us as the lack of common values.

New plan ahead!

This year marks the end of the three-year development strategy of TI Ukraine. Thus, we are going to have a new opportunity to research, analyze, and plan our effective work.

We make change so that our day after tomorrow is better than today

We can implement those changes that do not always seem most relevant. We are regularly, systematically making things happen to improve the country. The trust of our team, which fights for these changes alongside us, is inspiring and empowering.

The post Unusual 2020: Running a Marathon at the Speed of a Sprint first appeared on Transparency International Ukraine.

In four years, the study turned into an influential tool of change for city councils, it is used by potential investors, and there is struggle for high positions in the ranking, since a high position is prestigious for the mayor and means more opportunities.

We were happy about this.

At first glance, transparency seems an abstract concept, but in reality, it is very tangible. For example, in the most recent transparency study, we found that in 2020, 93 cities out of 100 provide their residents with an opportunity to apply for a place in a kindergarten or school online. Moreover, most of these cities use an open waiting list for the distribution of children in preschool institutions.

It may seem like a small thing, but in fact it is a huge step that not only makes life easier for young families (as kindergartens are now a luxury), but also reduces corruption in this sector. You don’t need to go “talk” to the principal and give them gifts to get a spot.

Such results are promising, but there are few cases like this: some aspects of municipal life are quite different. What is transparent on paper is sometimes purely declarative and not too useful for residents.

We couldn’t ignore it. That is why, this year, our Transparent Cities program is presenting two rankings, the transparency ranking and the accountability ranking. The picture is a little different now.

Transparency Is Improving

Mariupol came up on top of both rankings in 2020. In transparency, Mariupol scored 86.6 points, and the runner-up, Lviv,—85.2 points. For the first time in four years of research, two Ukrainian cities fell into the category of “transparent”—that is, have crossed the mark of 80 points and proved their willingness to be closer to the residents. And this is a really great achievement for Mariupol and Lviv.

Drohobych (78.1 points), Vinnytsia (76.7 points) and Ternopil (75.2 points) also ended up among the leaders of the Transparency Ranking. In total, 57 cities improved their results, and Volodymyr-Volynskyi gained 22 points, rising by 27 positions in the ranking and ending up in top 10.

The average transparency score in 2017 was 29.9, and today, it is already 47.7 points — almost 50%. Considerable growth, isn’t it? And as I said, it is quite tangible, since residents get more information on the authorities’ activity.

However, the dynamics of transparency growth is declining every year: if last year this figure was 10.4%, this year it is only 4.4%. And this trend is expected to continue, as it is easier for cities to implement “simple” indicators, and more complex ones are often postponed.

Nevertheless, the transparency of Ukrainian cities is a real achievement of decentralization, and it should not be underestimated.

You Can Watch but You Can’t Influence

But in the second ranking by TI Ukraine, the Accountability Ranking, the situation is rather different. According to our calculations, the leaders are also Mariupol and Lviv, but their score is already 32 and 22 points, respectively. Also out of 100. This is not even close to half the points.

There is a noticeable gap between the levels of transparency and accountability in the assessment of other cities. The five most accountable cities of Ukraine, apart from Mariupol and Lviv, also include Pokrov (22 points), Bila Tserkva (21 points), and Chernivtsi (20 points). Kovel and Dnipro have the lowest scores (3 points each), followed by Shostka (4 points).

We found that, according to both studies, the level of accountability is four times as low as the level of transparency. A total of 50 cities were evaluated for the second ranking, and 45 of them scored less than 20 points and received the status of “unaccountable.”

Accountability is about the ability of citizens to influence the decisions of their government, control it and check its work. In essence, this indicator shows how much municipalities allow citizens to be engaged in their work. Our Ranking shows that they actually fail to do so. However, aren’t they ready?

We remember that transparency was also uneasy four years ago, and it took cities a long time to be where they are today. That is why, when we were drafting the methodology for our Accountability Ranking, we included opportunities for improvement at the very beginning. And we know that it is necessary and possible to work with accountability.

New Ranking as a New Peak

Of course, both studies were not prepared separately, but in combination. And although there are twice as few cities in the Accountability Ranking compared to the Transparency Ranking, if we compare the results, the trends are fairly evident.

First, the Ranking results demonstrate a significant gap between the practical and formal openness.

That is, the publication of data on the city council website or the adoption of some decisions does not mean automatic transparency of local authorities. For example, nominally, 11 city councils have registered profiles on the Dozorro portal and have adopted a document that obliges procuring entities to respond to requests on the platform, but only two respond to at least 80% of feedback and requests received on this portal.

Secondly, the level of transparency and accountability of cities does not depend on size or region.Everything depends only on the proactive stance of the local self-government and its willingness to change.

It is often small towns that can be the first to initiate best practices in transparency and accountability. For example, Dubno and Mukachevo have launched a system of electronic registration of applications for housing, which was a true breakthrough in this sector. And Drohobych, last year’s leader of the Transparency Ranking, introduced electronic registration for municipal educational institutions based on the blockchain technology.

Thirdly, COVID-19 highlighted existing gaps in local government activities and significantly narrowed the opportunities for citizens to attend local government meetings or public reports of the mayor.

In 2020, only 9 city councils out of 50 (Odesa, Mariupol, Oleksandriia, Brovary, Chernihiv, Drohobych, Kherson, Kamyanets-Podilskyi, Mukachevo) ensured online broadcasts of the meetings and announced them in advance. The other cities failed to provide such an important element of citizen engagement in their work, which not only negatively affected the cooperation of cities and communities, but also affected the scores in our research.

The epidemiological situation remains difficult, so city councils should look for new ways to ensure direct dialogue with citizens during the pandemic.

However, we know that nothing is impossible for Ukrainian cities, and we at TI Ukraine are ready to help. If city councils demonstrate a political will, willingness to improve and become more open to their residents, they will become more transparent and more accountable.

There are always new peaks to conquer.

The post Transparency Alone Not Enough: Focus on Accountability. New City Transparency Ranking first appeared on Transparency International Ukraine.

She said this in her commentary for Dnipro TV channel.

“According to the three annual final evaluations, we see that the level of transparency is increasing. 53% over three years — this growth definitely makes us happy. It was made possible, among other things, by the influence of an entire range of factors over the recent years.

This includes legislative requirements forcing Ukrainian cities to become more transparent. Also, the decentralization reform, which is actively implemented and is posing new challenges to local authorities. Finally, it’s the citizens themselves, who arme becoming more demanding to their representatives in city councils and using new opportunities, such as electronic services.

For our part, we are also doing everything possible to ensure that the Transparent Cities study provides positive dynamics. Thanks to the promotion of our initiative, cities are competing for positions in the ranking and asking what else they can improve.”

However, Anastasiia noted that this progress is also gradually slowing down year on year.

For example, in 2017, Dnipro was on the 66th position in the ranking and had 25.6 points. The following year, the city scored almost 67 points and took 5th place. But according to the results of 2019, Dnipro was already on the 9th position in the ranking with a score of 69.2 points.

To increase the level of transparency, TI Ukraine’s COO is recommending the local government to become more open to citizens:

“First of all, we are talking about citizens having real access to meetings of executive committees, commissions. Sometimes, even if the city council says there’s access, citizens complain they cannot get in. There is also a need to involve the public in the most important decisions, in particular those related to the lease of municipal property.”

The post City Transparency: Progress Continues but Slows Down first appeared on Transparency International Ukraine.

From the theoretical point of view, it is a rule of the people. In fact, democracy is a kind of social contract. You know for sure a quote from Winston Churchill that democracy is the worst form of government, but you can’t think of a better one. In other words, we have agreed that we live by certain principles and rules. It means that we respect, trust each other, accept the majority view, everyone has the right to be heard, and to be different as long as my freedom does not violate the freedom of others.

Before, democracy was perceived merely in terms of the declaration of will in elections, but in today’s modern technological world, the time and space are generally compressed. We live in a society of technologies, opportunities, open governance, various tools for influencing the government and the structure of the government.

Democracy acquires new meanings. For example, the White House deputy chief technology officer Beth Noveck states that delegating governance to citizens through electronic influence and participation, filing petitions, or electronic voting creates new forms of interaction between officials and the general public. Social networks result in opportunities to be heard for more and more people. These are new forms of democracy itself.

What values and principles shape a democratic society?

Awareness is of key importance. President Kennedy believed that the ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all. The creation of opinion without any reasoning, without the possibility to be justified, has damaging effects. Awareness is the driving force for quality improvements.

In addition, respect for the rights of others, acceptance of the right to be different is also important.

And the ability to take responsibility for your choice is crucial.

Who and what shape a democratic society in your opinion?

Everyone, in a perfect world. Every responsible citizen. The main task of society lies in understanding the principles of its functioning and realizing its role. “I’m an influential player in this game, I make a difference.”

We often say that the idiom “It’s no skin off my nose” is a long-standing principle of the existence of Ukrainians. Perhaps, one of the biggest obstacles is that people don’t feel they are agents of change. Each of us is not just a carrier or object over which changes are made, but an influencer.

An example from our daily life. A child goes to a school where there are “charitable contributions.” We should admit that they are a part of Ukrainian reality, which sometimes are justified because other funding opportunities are unavailable. However, there are many cases when budget funds are allocated, goods are purchased, but they are either distributed incorrectly, not used at all, or stored in warehouses. Actually, to be an agent, a real example of change, is to be able to go (for example, to the web portal DOZORRO), view, check, find out information and use it to influence.

How do you assess citizens’ awareness of their rights and freedoms?

I would subdivide this category into several ones. On the one hand, there are more and more young people who were born in an independent country and have different values. This generation is more aware of their rights. Another question is whether they are really aware of their responsibilities that go together with those rights…

On the other hand, the capacity of electronic governance and publicly available information actually increases awareness. At the same time, awareness of the anti-corruption institutions` performance is not as high as we would like, and it is increasing relatively slowly. Less than half of the citizens are informed about anti-corruption institutions` functions. And this is also one of the growing areas of our society. Ukrainians should be more aware not only of their rights, but also how they can influence the work of state authorities, control their performance as taxpayers, and so on. All big things have small beginnings, for example, what state authorities we have, what their functions are, what can be controlled, in what way, and how their effectiveness is measured.

In your opinion, what are the changes in civil society over the past year?

From the chronological point of view, some active citizens, leaders of organizations became politicians after the presidential and parliamentary elections.

On the one hand, it has resulted in new opportunities as organizations have a possibility of direct communication, they can share their best practices and experience. It includes submitting their own draft laws or participation in the development of new ones.

On the other hand, it has created a certain personnel shortage because 60-80 new Members of the Parliament seem to be from civil society. And it is not a lot, but these active citizens are influencers and driving forces of changes.

In general, it seems to me that civil society has taken full advantage of it.

And next, if we mention the quarantine period, this is a challenge that the whole country has faced, and civil society is not an exception. According to a survey by our network of partners, 14% of the citizens have said that they were forced to actually stop their activities due to the quarantine. Half of them were barely affected by the pandemic and were able to reorganize their activities. About a quarter of organizations were forced to reorient significantly due to the fact that their target audience was inaccessible to them, or they faced new challenges. At the same time, for some of them, it involved new opportunities, new grants, new ideas, new projects.

Civil society in Ukraine is quite influential, dynamic, adaptable and sometimes it reflects the public mood (despondency, fervor, liveliness, readiness to changes, consolidation through external threats or on the contrary, disagreement, ideological resistance, or struggle) in comparison to other countries.

What are the most notable events in the life of civil society this year?

It depends on what the organization deals with. If you mean Transparency International Ukraine, we often deal with change advocacy at the national level. Therefore, the adoption of certain anti-corruption laws has become a significant event for us. Firstly, a set of anti-corruption projects was adopted, which society has approved. Now we are more often faced with attempts to ‘roll back’ reforms, for example, in procurement. We do our best to maintain the Prozorro system and equal rules of the game.

What did you and your team learn during the last year?

We have realized how important values and the overall meaning of the word “team” are. If a team is real then it shares the same values and aspirations, not the same spaces.

For instance, we pay particular attention to recruiting. After the interview with candidates, one of the first questions is how they fit for the team, whether they share our values or whether they are like us. We work on the advancement of the public good, perform some part of the “activist” work instead of our fellow citizens, and our first agent, a brand advocate, is our colleague.

The quarantine also has demonstrated that we are ready for changes, are able to adapt all the time, and be flexible in planning. We were technically equipped since we had an electronic task management system, document storage platforms, and tools for conducting online surveys.

We handled the first shock, managed to keep the team together, not to fire staff. On the contrary, we took on new ideas and recruited new employees in an active way.

It is too early to say that the challenges have been overcome. We live in a new reality, transform, and get used to it.

What are the challenges Ukrainians must overcome to establish a democratic society?

Despondency is a serious challenge for us. We have frequent cycles of off-scale optimism that then plummets. It is typical for most societies, but Ukrainians become part of the cycle very often and quickly fall into negativity and despair.

The need to preserve and restore the territorial integrity of the state is another important challenge.

The next is the necessity to develop critical thinking among the majority of Ukrainians.

One of the studies that have examined the perception of the COVID-19 causes says that one in three Ukrainians believes that the coronavirus is specially designed and intentionally spread in the world. More than 60% of the respondents have chosen one of the options that indicate the artificial origin of the virus. This is quite a red flag. And good-quality education is one of the key tools for responding to it.

Furthermore, it is important for Ukrainians to realize the role of public organizations in protecting their rights. Some media tries to present public organizations as `grant-eaters` or people who do nothing useful. The more the public is aware of the possibility of influence through public activists, the more effective the society will progress. According to the current study, 40% of Ukrainians declare their willingness to pay taxes for the needs of public organizations, and this is a high positive indicator. As a sociologist, I understand that it is theoretically, but even the existence of such a statement is significant progress for Ukrainian society.

What are the criteria or indicators of a democratic society?

The ability to perceive otherness. In 2011, Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, KIIS, conducted research on how Ukrainians perceived various sexes, races, faiths, and so on. And according to the results, only 70% of citizens would vote for an unquestionably qualified female candidate for President of Ukraine, no more than 36% of them would vote for a Jewish candidate under the same conditions, and only 18% would support an Afro-Ukrainian politician. We have a very low level of otherness acceptance and a high level of intolerance, especially for what is historically not close to us.

Besides otherness acceptance, important indicators are resistance to populist slogans, the ability to critically evaluate them, check information, and the inability to spread fake information. As a result, the correlation between people’s choices and the changes they hope for will be obvious in society.

How are you going to celebrate the International Day of Democracy?

On September 15, we will be actively working, as we do every day. Every day our team takes small steps towards great victories.

P.S.

I wish to express my appreciation to our strategic partners and the team that we are moving towards common goals. Although this way is very difficult and our goal is far-reaching, we understand that success will not definitely come tomorrow. All of us want quick results, little and great victories on this way, but we know that they may not always be like this. It is a difficult motivational work of everyone with themselves, with their teams.

Thank you to everyone who is moving in this direction, with whom we are in the same boat, and I wish you would not lose enthusiasm under different circumstances, whatever they may be. We are strong and will deal with everything!

The post WHAT IS THE VOICE OF UKRAINIAN CIVIL SOCIETY? first appeared on Transparency International Ukraine.

The post Ukrainians on Courts: We Don’t Know Them but Don’t Trust Them first appeared on Transparency International Ukraine.

Of course, I couldn’t leave out the subject of corruption. Though, you would think, maybe it’s not that obvious, given how Ukrainians will probably soon be allergic to this very word. Any failure, problem or reasoning behind reforms can be put down to this phenomenon.

But this will not be about corruption among officials, and not about corruption in the high ranks. Today, we will be talking about corruption in our everyday life.

During 11 years (between 2007 and 2018), the share of people who personally encountered corruption or had family members who personally encountered corruption reduced by 25%: from 67% to 42%.

During the past five years, the share of people who believe a bribe is justifiable when a personally important issue is at stake has reduced from 37% to 13%. These data indirectly attest to the fact that people are tolerating corruption less.

However, no more than 12.5% Ukrainians claim they are ready to take any anti-corruption action, even something as minimal as report it to the media, and only 4% actually do it. 6% to 9% are ready to take other action, but only about 2% do it.

What does it mean?

Even though corruption as a problem permeates most aspects of life, even though you hear about it from everywhere, even though when you hear corruption you think about high-ranking corruption first, in real life, Ukrainians actually see positive change.

Often, this change is not due to their own effort, but because of civil society organizations, local and national authorities, law enforcement agencies, reform implementation etc.

Of course, there are still numerous problems which I haven’t mentioned here, but I would rather not focus on fails right now.

The post Dynamics of Corruption in Ukrainians’ Lives over 10 Years first appeared on Transparency International Ukraine.