The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission, which measures the integrity levels of public organizations annually, issued the results of the 2011 survey covering 670 central government agencies, local governments, offices of education, and public service-related organizations.

 

The disclosure of survey results on December 14 followed an October release, which covered investigation, law enforcement and regulation agencies.

 

In all public organizations subject to the evaluation, the Commission surveyed citizens (132,036) and public organization employees (63,745) who had directly experienced the services of the organizations concerned. The survey period was from August 29 to November 11, 2011. The evaluation is based on survey responses, and if an organization is found to have officials punished for corruption or to have been involved in activities undermining the reliability of the survey, the organization loses points.

 

 

The Overall Integrity for all public organizations stood at 8.43 points on a scale of 0 to 10, 0.01 points lower than the 2010 figure. Internal and external integrity indices were up by 0.07 and 0.06 points, respectively, but the new category of "officials punished for corruption" and "activities that undermine the reliability of the survey" lowered the overall marks.

 
Outstanding performers by organization category include the Multifunctional Administrative City Construction Agency, Ministry of Government Legislation and Statistics Korea in the Central Government Agencies category.  

The Gyeonggi Provincial government was recognized as the highest scorer in the Metropolitan Government category, and North Gyeongsang Province Office of Education received the highest ratings among metropolitan and provincial offices of education.

 

In the Public Service-related Organization segment, the Korea Housing Finance Corporation, Busan Environmental Corporation, Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements and Korean Teachers' Credit Union were among the best performers.

 

 

Among the respondents surveyed by the Commission, 0.8% said that they gave money, entertainment and favors to public employees, slightly lower than the 2010 figure (1.0%).

 

The 60,000-150,000 won range accounted for the largest share (25.6%) of the amount of money and entertainment, and in frequency, once a year (25.7%) and twice a year (30.9%) recorded the highest ratings.

The common reasons for giving bribes included promotion of relationships (28.2%), customary practice (26.6%) and facilitation of administrative processes (25.4%).

 

 

In the Central Government Agency category, those tasked with inspection duties showed the lowest ratings while the management and supervision of construction projects received the lowest results in the Metropolitan Government category. In the Local Government segment, construction- and housing-related permits and approvals posted the lowest integrity level.

Among duties for the office of education, running school athletic teams was found to be the most corrupt activity. Noteworthy is that 6.8% of the respondents in this category said that they had given money, entertainment and favors to public officials, much higher than the overall average of 0.8%.

 

The Integrity Index for International Transactions stood at 8.03, which was set forth by surveying personnel at foreign enterprises. This figure is lower than the 8.69 posted for the overall external integrity index, which covers Korean businesses and people.

 
Out of all foreign corporate respondents, 3.9% said they had given money, entertainment and favors to public officials, a figure higher than the average (0.8%). The transparency of administrative procedures and access to measures for appeal were the entries with relatively low ratings.

 

On the other hand, foreign enterprise respondents said public corporations (8.26), which are subject to official integrity evaluations, were better than private enterprises (7.79).

 

 

Internal integrity covers activities regarding personnel administration, budget execution and issuance of occupational directives. The fairness of occupational directives marked the lowest ratings (6.51), and 5.8% of the respondents said they had received unreasonable orders regarding their duties. The ratio of people receiving unreasonable orders remains similar to previous figures.

 

In budget execution (business facilitation expenditures, operating costs, travel subsidies and project budgets), 7.4% of public employees said they found undue and illegal budget allocations, a level slightly higher than that for 2010 (5.5%). At the local government level, the figure rose to 8.9%.

 

Meanwhile, a positive correlation was found between the determination and efforts of agency chiefs and the organization's integrity. Importantly, if an agency chief puts more effort toward fighting corruption, the agency shows greater improvement in internal integrity.

 

 

The Commission decided to exempt outstanding performers from the 2012 evaluation. Those with low performance will be recommended that they establish and implement plans to improve integrity, and the implementation results will be integrated into their "evaluation of anti-corruption competitiveness."