INTEGRITY AND TRANSPARENCY ASSESSMENTCorruption, favouritism and nepotism, running deep within Thailand’s public administration and public service systems,is compromising the viability of legal-rational authority and causing failure in the maintenance of integrity and transparency, resulting in a shortfall of good governance on a national scale. Following international practice, the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) has formulated the Integrity and Transparency Assessment (ITA) in the hope of creating a safeguard against corruption in government agencies as a whole, rather than having to deal with corruption on an individual/smaller scale. That is to say, ITA is not just an assessment, but an instrument by which each agency can strengthen its own operational integrity, better display transparency, and more efficiently serve the public. Without the corruption-breeding loopholes engendering inefficiency and unfairness of Thai public administration and narrowing of Thai public services, the country would stand a better chance of dodging corruption damage. Through a collaboration between Office of the NACC and the Faculty of Economics at Chulalongkorn University, ITA uses a holistic and comprehensive approach to enable multi-faceted data collecting, an essential resource when looking to enhance integrity and transparency.

Source: Bangkok Post January 24, 2021 21:45 UTC