Overall, according to the report, there has been little progress in implementing GRECO recommendations over the past year: an analysis of the passage of the fourth round of evaluation, which looks at the adoption of anti-corruption measures for deputies, judges and prosecutors, showed that only 34% of recommendations had been fully implemented by the end of the year. For example, Portugal's recommendations for members of the judiciary, 75% of recommendations for prosecutors and 40% for senior officials remain completely unaccepted
In addition, the authors of the document expressed concern about the impact of existing methods of measuring corruption on anti-corruption activities: for example, low perception of corruption in a country may be misinterpreted as indicating the absence of the need for certain anti-corruption measures and may not allow for a correct assessment of existing problems.
The report also includes examples of best practices from individual countries.
In Finland, for example, government officials report on their business involvement, interests in organizations or other types of ownership, other [employment] responsibilities unrelated to the future position, part-time jobs and other relationships and commitments that should be taken into account when deciding on the suitability of the candidate for the future position before taking office. Such reporting allows for the identification of actual or potential conflicts of interest prior to appointment.
In Slovenia, the process of adopting legislation, including anti-corruption legislation, is designed to ensure a high level of democratization. Most legal acts are published at the drafting stage on a single electronic portal, thus allowing the public to participate in their discussion. In addition, public debates involving representatives of all interested parties may be held if there is a significant public outcry on certain issues.
Estonia has a number of measures to minimize the opportunities for "small" (domestic) corruption in the areas most prone to it (migration services, permit and card services, police), including the introduction of the four-eye principle (preventing only one employee from performing a function), the installation of cameras in certain workplaces, the use of personalized logins when using ICT, the prohibition of any non-cash transactions, and the introduction of personal liability of non-employees.
In addition, the report includes a feature article by experts from the Oxford Internet Institute on the opportunities and challenges of using blockchain technology to fight government corruption. The authors of the article cite the openness and secure storage of data, the impossibility of changing individual records in the chain (without the costly and computationally impractical process of verifying all other blocks), and the ability to conduct transactions without establishing a blockchain as the main advantages of using blockchain.
At the same time, there are at least five challenges to implementing blockchain technology for anti-corruption purposes:
- The need to have "administrative will" to use such technology, i.e. the authorities' direct desire to implement anti-corruption mechanisms or their conscious resistance to publicize their activities and deprive some or other illegal benefits;
- the possibility of new forms of corruption - the concentration of discretionary powers to manage chain validation nodes in individual countries of the "technological elite" and the emergence of the possibility of their abuse of such powers, as well as the growing risks of cyber pretexting;
- dependence of centralization, security and scalability on each other - the more decentralized the system is (and, consequently, the lower the risk of discretionary powers and, as a result, the emergence of corruption), the less scalable it is (slower, requiring significant computing resources); other ways of increasing scalability raise issues of security and trust in miners and network managers;
- the vulnerability of public administration to the risks of money laundering and financing of illegal activities in the case of cryptocurrencies;
- the existence of a number of legal complexities, such as conflict of laws issues, as the nodes of the chain will be located in several different jurisdictions, and the uncertainty of who will be liable for network failures.