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Measuring transparency and accountability work: The fix-rate Integrity Action has developed a simple approach – the fixrate – as a key metric for transparency and accountability work. The fix-rate measures the incidence with which transparency and accountability related problems are resolved to the satisfaction of key stakeholders. Regular citizens, business people, politicians, public officials, journalists and NGOs can be among those who identify the problems. An equally diverse range of individuals and institutions can be involved in the resolution of these problems. This indicator can provide a benchmark for those committed to reform that actually tracks progress. The fix-rate focuses on measuring outputs, like the resolution of citizen complaints or improvements in public service delivery based on problems identified by the stakeholders of this service. Inputs, in turn, are activities or policy changes, like public hearings, social audits, information portals, integrity pacts, or access to information laws. The fix-rate assesses whether these inputs empower citizens and public office holders, individually or collectively, to achieve a specific fix and therefore an improved outcome that is in the public interest. When such fixes are achieved with some degree of consistency this can be interpreted as a signal that a policy, law or method of problem solving works and that it has the potential to become a routine practice of state-society relations. This article will show that Community Integrity Building is also a very cost effective way to achieve fixes. On average it costs less than one per cent of the value of the infrastructure projects and services that are being improved. Aid and government projects in developing countries can conservatively be estimated to lose, on average, between ten and 25 per cent of the value of a project to fraud, corruption and mismanagement.1 The African Union estimated in 2002 that, on average, 25 per cent of Africa’s GDP (ca. US$148 billion) is lost to corruption every year. If one per cent of a large project’s costs are invested in Community Integrity Building and that has the result of reducing the loss rate caused by waste, corruption and mismanagement by even four per cent this would represent a threefold net return on investment, making this approach in principle self-funding. The adoption of the fix-rate as a key metric of the transparency and accountability movement can help to drive innovation and efficiency gains, helping to highlight what works. If the fix represents the cure, the Community Integrity Building approach is a type of treatment. Different treatments may cure a patient more or less successfully, and while we now have confidence that Community Integrity Building works, it is not designed for every ailment or for every context. A fix could also be achieved with other methods, especially in settings where people who are generally trusted, principled and competent manage public programmes. Using the fix-rate as a key unit of measurement makes it possible to compare the effectiveness of different treatments of intervention and to assess whether the treatment is long lasting. In countries and government sectors where corruption and maladministration are widespread, the use of the fix-rate will also generate positive externalities as some of the examples given below will illustrate. The main question that drives Integrity Action’s work is: How can we empower citizens to be the catalysts for fixing the integrity problems of infrastructure and key public services that are of the highest priority to them? By using what we call an integrity lens and engaging citizens in a Integrity Action Commonwealth Governance Handbook 2013/14 67 Fredrik Galtung Integrity Action was founded in 2003 with a mission to empower citizens to act with and demand integrity, actively taking part in building institutions to promote a state that is open, accountable and responsive to their needs and expectations.2 Over the last five years we have tested variations on a core methodology called Community Integrity Building to test what works in order to fix transparency and accountability related problems in several countries in Africa, Asia, the former Soviet Union and the Middle East. We reached a milestone in the past year because the data we collected with our partners shows that the approach achieved a consistent fix-rate above 50 per cent for problems of infrastructure identified by local community members and that a fix-rate of 30 per cent could be achieved for public services like water, sanitation and social welfare.


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