ACRC Adds Criteria for Conflict of Interest
to the Integrity Assessment of Public Organizations This Year

- The commission will deduct points for sexual misconduct of high-ranking officials in relation to their duty -

(27th July 2021, ACRC)

In this year’s integrity assessment of public offices, the ACRC will add various items related to the conflict of interest of public officials, including the pursuit of personal interest by taking advantage of internal information, and it will deduct points in the assessment for sexual misconduct of high-ranking officials in relation to their duty.

This is intended to strengthen integrity assessment to eradicate recent moral hazard in public organizations as part of the efforts for the Ten Anti-Corruption and Integrity Innovation Initiatives established in April.

The Anti-Corruption & Civil Rights Commission (Chairperson: Jeon Hyun-Heui, ACRC) announced the ‘Plan for 2021 Public Agency Integrity Assessment’ and will implement a large-scale survey of 200,000 people, including public officials and citizens who experienced services from public agencies, from next month to November.

Considering recent events, such as LH real-estate speculation scandal and enactment of Act on the Prevention of Conflict of Interest in Public Office, the commission conducts assessment with various new criteria related to conflict of interest of public officials, namely pursuing personal interest of public officials using confidential or undisclosed information obtained in performing their duty, exerting unjustifiable influence of retired public officials, and effectiveness of the systems preventing conflict of interest in each organization.

Also, items will be added to assess corruption caused by abuse of power of public officials that citizens experienced. Together with this, from this year the commission will deem sexual misconduct of high-ranking officials, including heads of organizations, as a corruptive behavior and deduct points in the integrity assessment.

The ACRC will expand the scope and items for deducting points. For instance, for those organizations that had corruption cases causing social criticism as high-ranking officials are involved or multiple members in such organizations are systematically involved; or those organizations that had insufficient internal audit and many corruption cases were found by external organizations, the commission will deduct additional points through the qualitative assessment.

After completing the survey and assessment of corruptive cases to measure integrity of public offices from next month to November, the ACRC will announce the outcome with the level of integrity for individual agencies in December.

Integrity Assessment of Public Offices diagnoses the level of integrity in public offices by combining the outcome of the survey of public officials and citizens who experienced public service with the corruption cases took place in the organizations. The ACRC has measured and disclosed the levels of integrity of individual public agencies since 2002.

This year, the subjects of the integrity assessment are in total 708 public agencies, including central and local administrative agencies, offices of education, public service-related organizations, local councils, national and public universities, and public medical institutions.

In particular, this year the ACRC is implementing a reform to create a comprehensive assessment system for the level of integrity by combining the anti-corruption policy evaluation which examines anti-corruption efforts of organizations with integrity assessment that the commission has been implementing for the last 20 years.

Director-General Sam-seok Han of Anti-Corruption Bureau of the ACRC said, “this year, there were incidents that tarnished national trust towards public offices. Therefore, it is all the more important to tighten discipline in public offices.” He added, “agencies in various levels will strengthen anti-corruption policies further more to prevent and eradicate indiscipline and corruption. To this end, the commission will improve integrity assessment system.”

Attachment		Overview of 2021 Integrity Assessment for Public Organizations

□ Basis for Assessment and Subject Organizations

○ (Basis for Assessment) ｢Act on the Prevention of Corruption and the Establishment and Management of the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission｣ (hereinafter, the ACRC Act) Article 12 (Functions), Article 27-2 (Investigation and Evaluation of Corruption of Public Institutions) and Article 27-3 (Publication of Results of Investigation and Evaluation)

○ (Target Organizations) The ACRC selected 708 public organizations* among the public institutions specified in the Article 2 of the Act on the Prevention and the Establishment and Management of the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission by comprehensively considering their relations with corruption, their statuses of corruption, their sizes, possibility of investigation, etc.

* 47 central administrative agencies, 243 upper- and lower-level agencies, 90 offices of education, 217 public service-related organizations, 82 local councils, 16 national and public universities, 13 public medical institutions

□ Measuring Model‧Process and Utilization of Outcome

○ (Measuring Model) Comprehensive integrity level of each organization is calculated by adding the outcome of survey on internal integrity and external integrity and subtracting minus point (on the scale of one to ten)

※ Local councils, national and public universities, and public medical institutions are measured with a separate model.

< Model for Measuring Integrity of Public Agencies (2021) >

Measuring Areas	Subject of Assessment	Assessment Items	Measuring Methods
External Integrity	Citizens who experienced public service	11 items related to corruption awareness and experience	Phone call and online survey
Internal Integrity	Public officials of public organizations	18 items related to integrity culture and integrity in work	Online survey
Deduction of Points	Number of corruptive officials, number of corruptive cases		Utilization of Data

○ (Announcement of Outcome) Grade organizations in level 1~5 by the type of organization

< Reference: Categorization of Organizations >

◦ Central administrative agencies: Type-Ⅰ(more than 2,000 people), Type-Ⅱ(less than 2,000 people)

◦ Local governments: Upper-level and lower level (Si (city), Gun and Gu (district))

◦ Offices of education

◦ Public service-related organizations: Type-Ⅰ(more than 3,000 people), Type-Ⅱ (more than 1,000, less than 3,000 people),
Type-Ⅲ (more than 500, less than 1,000 people),
Type-Ⅳ (less than 500 people),
research institutes, regional public corporations

Plan for Measuring Model
Operation System and Procedure