 I'm very happy to be here because we are all alumni, IHE alumni and students, so I think we had a very nice learning experience in DEL and we are interacting definitely in a very less informal way rather than in a formal way, that's how I'd like to keep it. So today we are going to talk about corruption in water, understanding the issue and taking preventive measures. I mean, as Abraham mentioned, it's a topic which is very provocative, sensitive, but how can we tackle this problem? It's something which the Water and Energy Network we are trying to address and not an easy topic, very difficult, probably one of the most difficult to address and I'll share with you some of our experiences around this. Just to mention that I've been an alumna of IHE from 2005 to 2007, the water management program, so this is where we are, we are based in Berlin in Germany and I understand you are putting the queue and they where are you from, I'm looking at that, I'm really excited to see people from all over the world participate in here and the number is continuously increasing because we are very happy to share about this particular issue, corruption, which many organizations also are very reluctant to pick up because of the sensitivities around it. So I would like to start with a quote from Wangari Mathai who had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008 and she said, the global water crisis is a crisis of governance, man-made with ignorance, greed and corruption at its core. So this is very important to remember when you talk about water governance. Now very briefly about the water integrity network, we are based in Berlin, we used to be part of the transparency international and now we are an independent organization. So our work mainly focuses on advocating for political and social action for water and sanitation integrity, raising awareness of the benefits of integrity and training stakeholders to tackle this. We encourage collective action by supporting multi-stakeholder processes, connecting different actors and enabling and developing knowledge. We promote practical evidence-based responses to poor integrity assessing, researching risks and developing integrity risk mitigation strategies. So we work in many countries but primarily we have three focus countries, one is Bangladesh, the second one is Kenya and the third one is Mexico in the three different regions but apart from that we also work in different countries. For example, we are working in Peru, we are working in Dambia, we have worked in Indonesia, so in Albania. So we do work but our main focus are those three countries. Now I would like to introduce some terminologies here which you probably have come across and I just try to pick it up from different sources so that you get an understanding of what everyone was mentioning about the framework around which we work. So for example, we start with integrity because that's the core we are talking about here. Integrity means using vested powers and resources ethically and honestly and sharing services and resources go where they are intended and most needed. Practically this is done by building up transparency, accountability, participation and implementing anti-corruption measures. That's what we call the TAPA framework under which we work. Transparency is the principle of allowing those affected by administrative decisions to know about the resulting facts and figures and about the processes that result in those decisions. Accountability the fact of being responsible for your decisions or actions and of being expected to explain them when you are asked. Participation at the most basic level participation means people being involved in decisions that affect their life. So we all know these definitions and there are the definitions. The important thing is like how do you put it in practice and that becomes a bit of a challenge. We have them many times in paper that's an integrity issue if you're not actually applying them in your action. Now when you talk about participation there is another term which is becoming very important now called inclusion because participation what has been found is that it is actually not always inclusive and hence there is the whole discourse now around inclusion. Authentic involvement of traditionally excluded individuals and their group into processes activities and decision policy measures in a way that shares power. Here I would also like to mention when you're talking about inclusion we're also talking about gender and inclusion of women in the process. Corruption is the abuse of entrusted power for a private gain. Corruption can be classified as grand petty and political depending on the amount of money loss and the sector where it acts. Governance. In its purest form governance describes the structure and decision making processes that allow a state or group of people to conduct affairs. When you talk about corruption when you talk about integrity they all fall under the umbrella of governance. And good governance. Governance is one but good governance is something different which is among other things participatory, transparent and accountable. It is also effective and equitable and it promotes the rule of law. Good governance ensures that political, social and economic priorities are based on broad consensus in society and that the voices of the poorest and the most vulnerable are hard in decision making. Water governance. Now coming to water governance it refers to the range of political, social, economic and administrative systems that are in place to develop and manage water resources and the delivery of water services at different levels of society. Here probably a lot of you are coming from different water sector organizations, government agencies and probably you will be able to connect if you think where actually you do encounter issues of integrity. It's internal it's external you have to encounter both in your work. And one important point to mention is that like in terms of the sustainable development goals we are already behind that and addressing issues of corruption is very important if we are able to reach towards that goal. So we know water and STG6, STG6 is linked to the goal of water but there is also this goal called goal 16 which is talking about strong institutions and no corruption. So this is where we feel important also to focus. We need to build strong institutions and strengthen their integrity. Now continuing a little bit about water governance and where does integrity fall in it we picked up the OECD principles of water governance there are numerous other ways of looking at it but here is the OECD principles and here if you see they have got 12 different pillars of governance here and they are around effectiveness, efficiency, trust and engagement. Among the 12 a lot of them actually touches on integrity it's not for example regulatory framework, financing, clear roles and responsibilities that do touch us for very strongly on integrity and here I just want to mention when you talk of trust and engagement which is strongly linked to integrity. This is related to the contribution of governance to building public confidence and ensuring inclusiveness of stakeholders to democratic legitimacy and fairness of society approach and within this if you look we have principle nine which is the integrity and transparency principle. So this is one within the governance framework where integrity and transparency comes in but it's also captured in other pillars. Another important concept which many of you are obviously aware about and this is very strongly linked to integrity is human rights to water and sanitation. When you are working in the technical space we sometimes do not look at the issues of the governance but as it is to be noted that if you are able to address the issues of governance and management a lot of the problems can be solved. So human rights to water and sanitation is one where the right to save drinking water and sanitation is recognized in 2010 by the General Assembly of the United Nations and the Human Rights Council. The right to water and title everyone to have access to sufficient safe acceptable physical be accessible and affordable water for personnel and domestic youth. The right to sanitation and titles everyone to have physical and affordable access to sanitation in all fields of life that is safe hygienic secure and socially and culturally accessible. It is important to note that like we do talk a lot about water but we ignore sanitation but this is a very important topic that we should not we should not ignore and we need to address that. So clean water needs clean governance. Why focus on water and sanitation sector? What is so crucial about it and what is it like how it is vulnerable to corruption? So one we have to we all know that water is scarce and it's becoming more so. Water governance is dispersed across agencies. It is not something which is governed by one single agency for example there are different different ministries are involved the ministry of finance is involved in it the ministry of irrigation water resources environment and it includes also different line agencies. So it's a fragmented sector which makes it very open to corruption. It involves especially infrastructure work involves increasingly large flow of public and private private investment and as we all know because you have to build a lot of pipe network infrastructure dams etc everything involves big money and big money means there room for corruption. Water management is highly technical I think a lot of you will understand that what we talk about what you talk about when you talk about hydrology when you talk about what you call modeling etc these are very technical terms which a common person does not understand. So this is also what happens under the terms of technicality sometimes corruption and misuse especially for example in designing a project and implementing design. Informal providers play a key role in service delivery we all know especially in many cities we don't have access to water in informal settlements and slums then what happens there are private vendors then many times these vendors are controlled mafia and sometimes politicians are involved in these processes and these are corruption and what happens obviously the poor wire station marginalized they are messed up they are the ones who lose most. According to the global water intelligence 10 of the 20 scandals related to the water sector involves corruption. Corruption increases between 7 to 16 percent the prices for standard and unique so we also lose a lot of the money because of corruption. As you can see you can see it's all over the newspaper it splashes across televisions this is how it comes across scandals scams around corruption happening in the water and sanitation sector. I'd like to share with you a couple of examples and before I go into the examples I'd like to also mention that the topic of corruption is sensitive it's not easy to address it when you are going to talk to when we talk to partners when you talk to government agencies the first step is actually no sorry we are all fine we have got good processes in place sorry are you here to um what you call scrutinizer but that's not the fact the point is to understand that we all know it that there is an issue but how do you resolve it and this is where evidences are there and when we talk of corruption when we want to tell that like a corruption is happening there in this organization it is very important to just not to make acquisitions without strong evidence and proof because this can also destroy the reputation of an organization and an individual hence what we try to do is like whenever we are sharing any examples etc all those have been backed by evidence have been published in places that are publicly available and not on something which you have been hearing about so this is very important to take into note now here is an example from South Africa why I'm bringing this in is our director Barbara Schreiner she talks about issues from South Africa and she mentions that like this is for one of her publications we did corruption in South Africa's water sector in 2014 she mentions about someone an old woman who is slaughtered a chicken to celebrate the presidential launch of the Guiani water project that would bring water to 55 villages going down look at 2021 the project costs have risen from around us 35 million dollars to 200 million dollars imagine that that's not even 10 years project remains unfinished amidst claims of corruption obviously there are other young boys drowned in an open trench for those who did not did get water it is often wrong the matibula who was who is the lady in here still fetched water from crocodile interest river the economy and the health impacts are affected in the villages and contributed to overdraft of department of water and lack of funding for other parts so this is an example like the chain of what can happen and when you talk of corruption we're looking at a bit broader than just the exchange of money there can be other ways how corruption and poor integrity are executed so now as we move I would like to bring another example here from Los Angeles the USA in 2013 the Los Angeles department of water and power introduced new water business many residents received inaccurate or delayed water bills some inflated massively inflated there were lawsuits which follow there was a settlement in 2017 the city committed to repay 67 million dollars to customers two key lawyers in the case worked for both sides defending the city and representing the class actions idea allegations that the city had deliberately ingenious this situation new lawsuit came up again charging the city with attempting to cover up pollution in 2017 settlement by conducting a fraudulent action review so if you look at it here is another example how corruption can happen this is around our urban water utility we're talking about now and this has gone on if you look at there is an clipping which says that like it's being investigated also by the FBI so what I also like to mention is that corruption exists everywhere during a discourse during a discussion it often comes across that like the global south which actually is the hub of corruption but unfortunately that's not true it's everywhere it's even in the global north what probably happens is that people in the global south suffer more from corruption because it affects directly on a daily life which comes in the form of petty corruption and institution and grand corruption happens at another level and we're also more money big money are involved another example I want to give which you might want to consider do you think it is corruption do you think it's a systemic failure do you think it's the issue of integrity and this is from Bangladesh where there are these excellent treatment funds for the government you know Bangladesh is one of the biggest hub of government production in the world so what this was a study which we had done with Transparency International Bangladesh and what we have found is that 40 to 80 percent of the excellent treatment plans in these factories are not designed according to standards and are not operating so by law they are supposed to be implementing the law and operating the excellent treatment plans and treating the waste water before being discharging that but that's not really happening so what are the challenges I mean one of the challenges in the last one we talked about is indications of bribery and corruption not true very difficult to prove so this is important to remember that is this an acquisition or is this an indication so this is something we need to take into account however there are other things which comes up and it starts looking at the broader aspects of integrity lack of monitoring system who is responsible for that there are sometimes lack of resources sometimes there are lack of capacity there's lack of accountability mechanism inspections are not carried out properly ensuring inspection of because not getting access to factories so there are multiple issues that you have to deal with another issue which we have been working on very a lot recently extortion when you talk of corruption we talk of bribe we talk of extortion but there also can be corruption in other forms and in this case how women suffer a lot when they're actually trying to get water we have been looking at some studies and we have also been working on our own research in some countries for example here it's mentioned that one in five women have experienced extortion or knows someone who has been accessing public services including water and here is a quote from Johannesburg if I don't have the money to bribe the utility staff he will sexually abuse me because that's the only valuable thing I can give them or in Bogota men want sexual favors to deliver water and this is a form of corruption women because of their vulnerability and inability to walk long distances to get water also given to men's demands so this is very important to note that these are some of the issues we don't talk about which are taboo but it's important that we recognize and start systematically accessing them now understanding corruption I mentioned about grand corruption about petty corruption so here I just like to elaborate a bit more on this which is grand corruption typically takes place at high levels in public or private sectors involves actors that make rules policies and executive decisions so basically it involves government agencies it involves politicians it involves bureaucrats often involves large sums of money often called political corruption highlighting the negative influence of money in political process petty and administrative corruption small scale administrative or petty corruption at the interface between public institutions and citizens bribery linked to implementation of laws rules and regulations for example and civil servants give access to water only if they receive a payment higher than the real plan usually small amounts of money often not clear where corruption petty corruption and grand corruption begins systemic or institutional corruption and other aspects to look at this does not refer to individual lack of corruption but the consistent pattern of fire in the generation and application of laws standard that favor private interests over common groups so this is like how institutions are captured by certain power groups and this also involves multi stakeholder processes where some stakeholders have more power than others and they tend to influence decisions so there are many aspects when it comes especially with water which is the resource which is required by everyone not only for drinking purpose but also for industrial agricultural etc. Now three major areas of corruption and integrity failures one which I already touched upon in the last slide is looking at corruption in public resources management then corruption at individual or institutional interface and issues of integrity equity and development going beyond corruption to look at like how it affects the marginalized and informal centers. Private gains might include diverting funds to one's own position while political gains could mean for example using public resources to consolidate power some people are in positions of power for example in utility acts the managing director has been there for 10 years that's the kind of also a political corruption which happens corruption and integrity failures happen everywhere at one end is petty corruption mostly involved in individual and the other end is systemic institutional corruption embedded at all levels even in this challenging environment pro integrity preventive actions can be highly effective so that's going to mention now that we have been talking about corruption what is more important is like how do you prevent it and that's why pro preventive measures are one of the best approaches and when you talk of integrity we look at it from a positive aspect because corruption is negative no one wants to talk about it so let's look at it turn it around and let's look at it from a positive perspective corruption and integrity failures in water and sanitation affect every stage of program development and service delivery they have remained as financial social human environmental and climate law and mostly affecting the poor so just to give a quick example if this is a water service delivery let's say phases or in water service delivery what happens is you have allocation you allocate resources you may be budget it may be allocation to different departments so then there is procurement construction service delivery operations monitoring maintenance where does corruption happen in all this and this is just a simple example and looking at it from a let's say brutal project allocation funds allocated primarily to villages of family or friends funds allocated to ghost villages and embassies procurement local power and community politics tendering processes controlled by cartels arbitrary tariff status substandard cheap materials used while construct construction is being picked up build structure not according to specifications or design service delivery rise demanded or services received vulnerable communities left behind operation lack of accountability and poor maintenance of facilities facilities no control over funds meant for operations and repairs money is appeared so this is just a simple example now when you're talking of corruption and as I mentioned earlier you have to be very careful to what you can attribute something to corruption and which actually is maybe indicative but not really corruption or maybe it's also sometimes the fault that is issued and hence is very important to investigate properly and always have the evidence and here comes one term which you'd like to bring is red flag where you are working where you are working you probably come across you suspect something something is wrong but you cannot prove it those suspicions can be considered like kind of red flag so red flags of corruptions and activities circumstances or other indicators that may indicate the presence of corrupt activities within an organization or work at the very outset it must be noted that the presence of red flag should not necessarily be treated as evidence that corrupt activities are taking place rather red flags should be observed and treated as a potential starting point for institutional investigations into corruption as well as compliance verification activity now here I am giving some examples which falls in the range of red flag probably in issues of integrity but not necessarily corruption but these two affect our functioning of the water sector water and sanitation overpricing evidence that irrigation systems in country Guatemala developed without feasibility study applied unjustified higher so they went ahead without feasibility study will you call it call it corruption probably not it's not corruption but it probably something else if there is they are mandated to have a feasibility study and they do not do that then probably there is an issue of accountability and integrity poor upstream planning designed that did not account for climate change impact resulting in projects that became non-operational in Malawi now this is this corruption no but upstream planning and do not take into account issues of climate today addressing climate issues is one of the most important as addressing human rights to water issues if we ignore these in our planning process then we are definitely leaving out something very crucial and important and that we consider integrity issues and governance issues again poor upstream planning because of land acquisition issues storage reservoir of Mabira Dam in Uganda lost almost half its initial plant capacity this is another example of planning outdated sensors drinking water systems in El Salvador based in old sensors and did not meet the requirements of the population here again is a question if you have a new sensor why not use it if you don't have a new sensor how do you actually work around it that is very important and this is an issue of planning probably and how do you actually strengthen our planning fraudulent land acquisition most only towards corruption wastewater plants in Bangkok was never built due to land acquisition problems and most of the domestic and industrial wastewater which you have intended to keep it still discharged untreated and this is a problem where land was acquisition fraud compromising design newly constructed embankments in Bangladesh collapsed due to compromising design height leading to flooding in problem what happened basically was like the embankment had a certain design just provided by the engineers but when the work was executed it was not according to the design because you can chip off and you can get money out of it and this is the kind of a problem and you cannot always pinpoint out the problem this is very difficult when it comes to investigating corruption so it will be nice if you can add some of your experienced knowledge case of corruption in the water sector it will be good to see if you if you are if you're able to put something which has evidence or is it something that is here here and obviously here we are not accusing anyone of anything now to move forward what is water integrity wind defines water integrity as the use of vested powers and resources ethically and honestly for the delivery of sustainably equitable water and sanitation services in the competition it is implicit in human rights obligation explicit in administrative justice laws in many countries operationalized through the principles of transparency accountability participation and corruption so this is how we try to look at it from a positive perspective and how this can be positively influenced integrity equal to transparency plus accountability participation and corruption here is a short video which I would like to play and I hope you can hear Abraham please let me know if people are hearing and if it is bit difficult we can definitely stop the video but let me try playing it Benak we don't hear the sound perhaps you could reshare like if you could unshare and then share again and check the optimize for video option but more than 663 million people across the world have no access to safe drinking water or sanitation these people are mostly poor and vulnerable and their basic human rights are not being met largely because of poor management corruption and wasted resources in 2015 the UN adopted sustainable development goals for the water sector to meet them we need to act urgently and improve water integrity by water integrity we mean open accountable decision making by all the people involved in managing water resources it's crucial that these are managed fairly and sustainably but too often this isn't happening all around the world people get sick from dirty water pipes and pumps are collapsing water is stolen from utilities and people need to pay bribes just to get water or a toilet this needs to stop by working together we can fight corruption and make sure the water sector is fair and efficient the water integrity network supports people like you and organizations and governments to promote integrity we can build integrity walls to keep out corruption using building blocks transparency means ensuring that people know their rights can see how decisions are taken and how money is spent accountability means making sure decision makers take responsibility and achieve fair efficient and sustainable results participation means consulting all relevant people when making decisions that affect them anti-corruption means making rules stronger and enforcing them properly keeping corruption and integrity issues hidden only lets them grow by talking about integrity and building integrity walls you can change things and make a real contribution towards achieving the sdgs because only a well-run and corruption free water sector can handle the enormous challenge ahead you are not alone explore the win website for tools and inspiration get in touch to discuss how we can work together they hope you heard it somehow i'm not able to see the camera now can you see my power point presentation yes we do okay great then i'll continue somehow i'm not able to see the faces now for some reason so anyway so that was a short video to talk about integrity and corruption now moving forward the cost of corruption and the opportunity for integrity it has been estimated very difficult to also estimate how much is lost to corruption how much money goes down the drain but if there are estimates from the world bank and others which estimates that four to 26 percent of losses can happen in the water sector due to corruption apart from the financial costs we are also talking about social costs poor water quality poor service with direct impact on people's health life livelihood environmental costs for pollution vulnerability to disaster long-term system failures poor quality delayed or missing infrastructure loss of economic productivity lack of trust between water users and government maladaptation to climate change some of the few implications we are talking about there are numerous others that you are aware of integrity is more a lever for change for more effective and equitable use of the resources already available for addressing root causes of issues and systemic problems for building trust and creditworthiness and attract new financing that is mutually reinforcing with opposed to realizing the human rights to water and sanitation that is impossible with practical incremental and impunity management practices and now as mentioned earlier just to reiterate corruption is a sensitive topic we get educated you know when you are working in an organization and someone is saying oh there is corruption in the government in this sometimes you are an honest person you're an honest person you're working there but there may be other systems in place other people and when you find this it definitely makes it frustrating it's very important to take note of this we're dealing with a very sensitive topic here water integrity is a positive approach to address integrity performance and corruption issues emphasizes equity and focuses on preventive risk mitigation health build trust and bankability citizens are keen to engage when there is an opportunity efforts to combat corruption as a society and human rights are mutually reinforcing prevention is less costly comparatively no maintenance and tackling corruption so from an integrity readiness perspective we try to look at in the different areas where you can strengthen integrity it can be done within policymaking processes it can be within regulation multi stakeholder processes very difficult for how do you address that there financial investments planning and designing resource allocation tradeoffs very important where the water has to be traded off for example in IWRM and water we have nexus processes where water has to be shared between what you call irrigation for the private sector for the environment for the human requirements so there's always a tradeoff which is gender and inclusion so what we try to do is like to make it more structured approach to address issues of integrity we look at it as like you can undertake assessments integrity assessments it can show you that where are the gaps where you can probably strengthen the system and then there are processes for for integrity management tools which you can apply and one important aspect is to always continue to keep monitoring very important to note that all these actually involve quite a bit of resources and how are resources made available for tackling issues of integrity with something and governance is something very important to also pick up in our own work now I want to go a little bit deeper into the different subsector it's very difficult to cover because water is everywhere but I try to pick up a couple of them and why it is important why can we just not let ignore it and let it go on one for example look at it when it comes to urban water and sanitation more than two billion people are expected to be living in informal settlements by 2050 this is important also to note that because of climate change a lot of the people are being displaced from rural areas from different parts and they where are the landing they are all going to be in cities and where in the city because they are not the most what you call financially well off people they will be coming to the slums and the informal settlement and we already know in that many of the cities of our world we already have the crisis of providing drinking water and sanitation health education in this settlement and then when you have with the climate impact you're going to have more people there and this is another added challenge which you have to deal with now 550 billion people urban residents without safely managing drinking water 1.5 billion people without safely managed sanitation so that was an urban urban water management utilities cities municipalities they are involved in this process how do you actually system strengthening that helps them to deliver better and and just to mention that at Water Integrity Network we work with different organizations different government agencies for example water utilities so we are engaging with them and not from far trying to tell that hey there is a problem but rather we all acknowledge there is corruption there are issues of integrity how do we together water and climate very important when you talk of water and climate we are talking not just for water supply sanitation it's just not the sectors you are involved in where we are working but involves much more many more so water is very relevant for environment for hydropower for natural disasters sanitation food and agriculture and there are obviously others apart from this disaster for example is something important for flooding drought etc now just some climate I want to mention that a lot of the focus has been around mitigation and when they say that mitigation energies for mitigation however just to be noted that water is for adaptation and this is where now more focus is going because adaptation measure and funds for adaptation are slowly increasing or there's a huge demand for such finances and if you look at it for adaptation funding three sectors linked to water absorb almost 80% of all funding and that way water and wastewater disaster risk and natural resources climate finance for water from the dream climate funds 39% of their funding is going for water related projects annually and if you look on the right side you will see this figure would say that infrastructure where a lot of issues of integrated corruption can happen if you see 54% of all costs in climate adaptation are linked to water so if you notice there's a lot of money involved in water and it's important to see how we safeguard that so practically speaking if us hundred billion dollars every year are mobilized for multi-lateral climate finance with the 13 percent share allocated for water project roughly one to two billion can get lost to corruption this is a huge number 31 cases of integrity violations have been registered in 2020 in the green climate funds integrity annual report and 40 cases in 2019 bribery and adaptation infrastructure I'm giving again an example here when we talk about adaptation what we are trying to also talk about is like how do you about maladaptation because this is something which can happen in the future and you're not aware but you can probably take measures that avoid maladaptation so for flood protection in Indonesia bribe paid to city council by one of the companies involved in project to buy funding regulation after it was found and there were investigations the project has been halted what happened we lost money there and obviously there was no flood protection measure that would be put in place for communities for the population which is very important maladaptation similarly in cyclone shelter in Bangladesh where shelter was built on the land of the government engineer while the supposed benefiting fishing community lives on the opposite riverbed so these are just some of the examples to be taken into account what happens in this process the most vulnerable are being left behind the impact of climate change is affecting the vulnerable more again to note about climate injustice only 2% of funds reach the vulnerable community out of all the whole pot there is non-partisan decision making communities beneficiaries and CSOs are not consulted in climate planning processes in countries little attention is placed for for development of people who will be displaced and I mentioned about informal settlement and there's a bias towards major infrastructure projects leaving water and sanitation behind and note if there's a need for stronger accent on human rights water and sanitation pop is coming from next in two weeks time in Egypt and this is important to take these messages forward there so why it is important so if you if corruption happens that leads to sanction and we are looking at preventive action and which is probably more effective and cost efficient now I would like to go into some of the approaches how we try to address corruption issues and issues of integrity and I'd like to bring in some risk some new term and tools which we apply in our work integrity risk and tools so integrity risk which are might be a bit similar to red flag our condition or processes that to make get the capacity to fulfill their mandate with integrity and that comprises sustainable water and sanitation service provision integrity risks have a known probability of occurring integrity risks are possible at different levels from individual sections such as accepting price for service delivery collusion in big infrastructure quality integrity tools are measures and actions that an organization can take to prevent reduce or mitigate integrity and this is an example of what are the integrity risks if you go deeper into this to understand many risks with direct impact on cost and reputation of individuals and organization limited practical guidance of prioritizing and dealing with risk so here if you see what can be a risk misuse of key position is a risk um relatives and friends preferent recruitment is a risk unsatisfying employment condition um non-cooperative customers insufficient complaints management and customer orientation falsification of invoices and accounts so there are numerous areas where integrity risks exist and how do you actually tackle them through tools which you consider are adaptable and scalable they are practical participatory data driven and adaptable which is important to note like the tools that we work with we want the organization themselves to drive the process they need to take the what you call the drivers on beyond the driver's stage and themselves identify which are the risks they think that are existing which are the risks they want to prioritize in their organization we just provide the what you call the tools and we'll give it for the organizations to decide which way they want to take it forward obviously with some support and participation from our end the different types of tools I mentioned earlier if you remember when it comes to integrity management there is assessment and there is management so for assessing integrity we have a couple a few tools which is in our work there is the annotated water integrity scan when it is difficult to talk about corruption especially in a group and to avoid people accusing each other or pointing fingers you need to approach it very uh what you call softly taking the sensitivities into account and this particular tool always what we call is a very useful tool there where you start the process of unpacking the issue without being accusatory then there are other tools like the water integrity risk index which looks that they use a big data to identify trends and patterns where corruption can exist or where there are risks and then we have a particular tool for utilities which looks at the integrity gaps that a water utility can have in applying this also in our work and then management when we know there are certain graphs the risk that this how do you address that then you will go through a process of using management tools and we have quite a few tools but I'm just highlighting one which is one linked to integrity management for organization and it addresses risk within finances human resource management it addresses risk in customer relations management and leadership external environment regulation with communities how communities can play an important role in integrity management in compliance it's also important to know that communities sometimes do not understand the laws and the compliances by which organizations government agencies have to work and this tool helps in making them aware of like what are the different laws compliance mechanisms in place and how do you actually align with them and how you also play at the role of a observer of a watchdog of projects how when they're being implemented so integrity assessment this is where what we try to do is like it's a systematic approach where we undertake with a set of indicators if you see there are like we have some principles we have five principles we are talking about thrown at the top if the leadership is very proactive in addressing issues of integrity if the leadership does not consider it important then what happens the organization is not able to address it but if the leadership at the top state we need to address the issue of corruption and integrity that is the phone at the top and here we try to identify integrity agents integrity champions in different organizations we have our own integrity champions in different water utilities their government they're coming from the government and we're very proud of them that they how they're trying to tackle the issue from within we have got mayor integrity champion who actually take up that role in cities risk assessment second point where we talked quite a bit about risk now and how do you assess those systematically controls what measures you have in place do you have code of conduct do you have what you call terms for procurement processes do you have guidelines for bidding processes do you have complaints mechanisms in place for customers for staff grievance mechanism for staff these are all integrity controls what corrective actions you are taking when you discover there is a fraud there is a gap and monitoring so we have this which helps in looking at the assessment part of integrity processes and this helps in understanding where are the gaps and then you can try to address those gaps and then you can use tools like the integrity management organization when you have identified different gaps you you have already like the preliminary data and and then you try to see how do you address it one important thing which I would like to mention is that when you try to engage with organization it's not easy it can take quite a bit of time because first you have to convince them you have to convince them that then that we are not there to point fingers we are not accusing we are not going to what you call bring distribute to your organization you know it's a reputational risk so important to gain the trust and it takes time it takes time it can even take six months it can even take one year before they decide they want to go ahead and apply different integrity management processes what I also like to mention here is that we have examples where they don't want to talk about corruption they don't want to even talk about integrity but they would like to address the issue so we have some project where they call the performance improvement change management rather than talking about integrity and corruption so we have to shift the narrative when required and that helps also in the process something important to note so then we undertake participatory risk assessment based on model every organization business model so we try to map the risk to the business model and then prioritize each other is and when it's a we the participants themselves do it the management it involves the management it involves the stuff then identification of tools that can help in addressing those risks and then you develop a roadmap what happens a lot is that we go for workshops we have training but then it's done we don't know what to do next in this case if resources are available what we try to do is develop a roadmap and implement it and road map to be implemented can take time to address issues of integrity corruption it cannot be done in a few months it can take a year to more than one year so it's a it's a long-term mid-term to long-term engagement which has to be factored in if anyone wants to venture into it and that's why it's important for donors and investors who actually invest more in integrity management and here when a roadmap is developed you try to implement it and there are coaches integrated coaches who help you in mentoring and supporting the process within an organization also there are people who are champions as I mentioned who support this process I want to give an example of where we have been applying this integrity management process and it's the khulna water and sewerage authority in Bangladesh and we have here Mr Muhammad Abdullah who is the managing director of khulna wasa and he is one of our integrity champions he has been applying the tools since 2014 and he's still engaged this is also very important to note that people change people are transferred new people come in management changes then someone new might not be interested in continuing so we are lucky to have someone there who is actually continuing and be supporting our work it may be in another organization someone who's interested in the topic of integrity however it's transferred because the government position we have such examples it again takes us time to convince the new management new director etc but it worked it has worked so in khulna what happened we we have this process started where we applied their integrity management full box and what has happened is like there have been changes within the management processes there have been reduction in delays between water connection requests and fixing the connection the digitalization of billing improvement in billing delivery regularization of unmetered connection introduction of e-propurement processes reduce opportunities for corruption and contributing to khulna water and sewerage authority's revenue generation and business this is just a small example there are numerous other examples and it's a step-by-step process it cannot be done in a you know in at one go and it's a repetitive process you need to keep repeating this i mentioned about big data we have collected data from different cities and we looked at procurement data which are available openly and we looked at the water data which showed like the pattern so this kind of tool helps in monitoring, auditing and investigations of production rates it informs sector-wide policy decisions for example regulation and oversight it informs civil society and other stakeholders to hold governments accountable and advocate for better services and that tracks progress over time I want to give an example outside of tools so systematic processes because politically process is also very important when it comes to addressing integrity so here in this case the mayor from La Paz in Bolivia he launched a cross-sectoral city-wide anti-corruption program and in the first two years the key pillars are zero tolerance based policy based or code of conduct for public officials backed by prosecution of proctax focus on wider aim of economic recovery including reforms of fiscal policy collecting more revenue and restoring credibility reshaping the relationship between institutions and residents it's important to know that the mayor probably does not have a very powerful administrative role but he has a very important political role here in this case and the mayor tried to use that role to bring change different measures that have been that have been happened in La Paz for example statutory declaration of individual asset dedicated you need to leave initiative frequently sending out fake users to control how services are delivered action for civil servants performing well with integrity, transform and procurement policy inspection of materials and construction and project measures to limit nepotism district neighborhood daring to encourage direct participation of so it's important to note that here the mayor went very action-oriented and sometimes actions actually make a huge difference another area where issues of integrated corruption exist a lot is around infrastructure so very important this is the planning center so the strategic planning is taking into account priority setting project profiling and initial screening then there needs to work feasibility studies I mentioned about an example where there was no feasibility study cost benefit analysis environmental social impact design preparation and application of tools now and then obviously budget and approval costs and budget estimates authorization approval allocation of resources where does it go and these are some of the pointers which we try to look at when you try to adjust issues of infrastructure related integrity project beneficiaries project location these things matter we all come across there is a big project there is a problem of land acquisition there are conflicts happening with the local communities there because of land but you also want your project and we know historically we know so many cases that are there and how do you address these that important to take into account environmental issues you are mandated to have environmentally impact assessment but many cases the organization for institutions don't take that out what is done with this with you I personally have been involved early in my career where an organization I was working with they used to do environmental impact assessment for industries and they used to just basically take the data you're going to collect the data they take the data and send it across so that they approve it so there are numerous examples and I think they're from my own personal experience so I would like to stop because it would be good to I can see a lot of questions on the chat and we're also you know the time so moving forward it integrity I mean it's not an easy topic it's very difficult but we need to make a start so more importantly start the conversation about corruption and connect with integrity champions I'm glad that today we are talking about this topic make the commitment make commitments publicly announcing commit some resources for it build a joint understanding of risk priorities and context with data and the most marginalized context be inclusive as mentioned inclusion is very important think from a TAPA perspective use the framework of TAPA and let's hope we are able to make some changes thanks here are some publications recent ones but there are others also if you visit our website you will find yeah I think I'm done with the presentation and happy to take some questions fantastic thanks a lot benayak let's get right to the questions may I ask you to please stop sharing please so I can share from another computer the questions that have come in okay so we have some questions here I hope you can read them I'll read them out as well so we have a few a few seconds to sort of absorb absorb the question before benayak starts to respond to them Davis asks how do we objectively cut out corruption from inclusion integrity is key but can we measure that advocacy maybe would you like to respond to that benayak yeah before responding I would like to say that it's not an easy issue and I looked at some of the questions on the chat you cannot address everything so you will be able to address something if you need to take steps small step probably and I mean when you talk of inclusion and corruption how can you actually I mean you yourself have the answer in it more towards advocacy I think there's a need for more advocacy and awareness around the topic when it comes to dealing with inclusion communities how they're included in that one and second probably you need to make available platforms tools resources that community CSOs can use one of the challenges is for example a lot of the CSOs are facing are they don't have the right resources in terms of it's a very abstract topic how do you address transparency how do you address accountability it's very abstract so here it is important that we get some of these guidelines tools resources in place there are numerous are available but how do you make them available to the target people how do you actually get them in a language that they understand this is very important sometimes they're they're put together in a very in a language that is only understandable as we call technical language how do you make it accessible to others and one more important point I think here is the need to work with the media to bring out the issue of inclusion corruption etc I hope I am able to answer that yeah thanks a lot the next question is from Ihab Bidin Jayosi who shares his perspective on the particular issue of overpricing where he contains that feasibility studies that lead to unjustified high prices can also be part of managerial corruption yeah something yeah so yeah we have a lot of responses from people when we invited them to share their perspectives their examples their stories related to corruption in the water sector and thanks Ihab Bidin for sharing one of those Fran shares that often water utilities playing a social role it's something to be addressed and solved from municipalities but not from water utilities yeah I mean if I understand water utilities what is what can be the role of water utility to address we are trying to do that for example with our integrity management work in in kulna in Bangladesh in lima in Peru we are engaging the water utility to address the issues of services for informal settlements and how do you address that but there is a challenge the water utilities have there is the issue of what you call land settlements are they are they recognized are they not how do you address those so this is something where we we are trying to like identify and understand this is no process but they are also understanding and trying to address there are innovative ways which which they're trying to address this issue a comment from Davis says advocacy on inclusion can be can advocacy and inclusion I suppose can enhance transparency and eventually contribute to addressing corruption I think excuse me sorry about my voice and me coughing I have a bit of a call I think integrity lies on such a delicate edge a comment from amna sorry is a question from amna is what could be the role of the consultant who works as advisor for governments private sectors and NGOs through providing consultancy services such as feasibility studies ESIA design and construction supervision what could be the role of such a person in preventing corruption I think it's a very very good question actually because a lot of the work happens through consultants and not necessarily to the agents the government agents and here I think the ethics and the integrity of consultants are also important to take at their home they need to be fair in their particular communication they need to point out if there are discrepancies that that are there by law by from integrity from compliance that an organization is not trying to address they need to point it out it's important they have that role that comes from an individual perspective of your own value with your assets etc but another point is what we do we do work with a lot of consultants and what I mentioned is integrity coach or integrity agents so a lot of our work when you are engaging with utilities or river basin organization it involves working with consultants because they are on the ground they're no best and we engage them we train them and we hope them to be our integrity coaches and one important thing is the consultants need to be have the trust and the faith and their relationship with the agency government agency to address this problem and this is how we learn that it works so there are consultants who are working on yes environmental impact assessment infrastructure project and and this is where it is important like the organization for the health can we support you with some kind of more information around integrity around what steps need to be taken and the consultants also individually try to see if they can build their own what you call skills and strength understanding issues of integrity and corruption and apply it in their project the next observation or question by Ali is very foundational what's your idea regarding the kind of systematic corruption which is supported by authorities yeah it's it's very difficult I mean we do we do face this challenge it's I mean we cannot have all solutions but probably what is important is that as I mentioned earlier within system there are people there are actually many people who are working who are working quietly to bring the change reform and this is part of larger wider change management and reform process so those authorities those people who are actually very much keen to address this they are the ones we consider a champion and it's very important to identify them and actually to what you call share share about their work their achievement that will provide a more motivation and a moral booster for others otherwise we'll enter into that whole negative situation which we have we obviously are dealing with the next question is how do you solve the issue of irregular water supply which originates from from non-availability of funds from the government would that fall under the ambit of integrity and corruption nor it can fall because when the decisions are made for allocation of resources how the decisions are made if you want to take human rights to water and sanitation as the first priority but in your decisions you are actually allocating the water to an industry so this is why it is important like how decisions are made decisions can be made by incident by powerful actor decisions can be influenced by money so this is where and that's that's why such processes need to be more open and participatory so that the people who are going to be affected can have just say this does not happen always and accordingly the allocation of resources should need to be made and this is an one area of work we are trying to address more project early processes designing how do you allocate resources the next question excuse me again the next question is from bo kang who asks what role does do technical incapacities play in furthering corruption I suppose so technically incapacities I mean the lack of capacities the lack of skill if you are working in water resource management you are an engineer you are supposed to be someone who knows about the sector the engineering around the management around the you need to understand all these and in simple terms what I'd like to say is going back to some of the risks we talked about so technically incapacity is something how do you get there how are you how have you been recruited into that position and this I think is an important area to look at it's about human resource management when you're hiring what is your process of hiring because we know that in many cases people are hired through political influences what you call nepotism and this is this is where lies some of this problem it's not just hiring of staff but also within the recruitment of management of board and board members who are part of an organization how do you get to be part of the board so this plays an important role and many times there are people who actually have no knowledge of the water sector the next question is in the form of a story a community deep well was dug and the pump was stolen overnight after few days after the installation which left the community without water supply would you call that corruption an instance of corruption yes we have this as one of the reasons in our full box what we call theft and vandalism theft and vandalism is also an issue of integrity of corruption right the next question from smith is about what happens when top management has integrity issues I think we've already addressed that up next user SNS SP has shared a personal story I'll try to read it out very quickly in 1970 he was building a big drainage channel of about 50 000 q6 capacity excuse me land acquisition was going on as construction agency we were not allowed to acquire the land ourselves as we are prone to be corrupt both acquisition and use of land is in the same hand and old villager came to me in and said that you have almost completed the project but I have not received my compensation for the agricultural land I went to the land department and met the highest official as we have paid the money a long time ago he was very casual in hearing and said I would look into it do not bother and do your job and having said that he shut the conversation down thanks a lot for sharing that SNS SP that is a very interesting story binaik any thoughts any reactions to that that's uh that's also something like shutting out the messenger you you are already you know this is very important you try to when someone shares the message with you you try you target the messenger and that's also very important how do you protect the messenger how do you protect the whistleblower a lot of what you call examples are there where they have been persecuted and there are also for example transference international have in place to support whistleblowers what they call advisory advisory and legal support and available in many countries of the world where anyone who gets information about some corruption and they want to share they can actually try to uh insist legal services thank you um andere miruka asks the presence of middlemen or water vendor famously referred to as cartels along the supply chain with 24 seven water availability without let's just write at your doorstep yet your taps indoors are dry the common municipality water resource notwithstanding corruption in water is real and it stinks thank you for sharing that andere the next question is from terry who asks what can we do when corruption is so enrouted in the culture the society or the country that some actions are considered completely normal and done every day by all citizens considered so normal that many people do not recognize such actions as corruption another important area where we have to deal with i mean if you look at what is corruption um in a very what you call the global education the global policy way if you look at it many things come into corruption from the global north also they look at many things of corruption and in both our global south many countries you see like it's maybe not considered corruption and these things you need to factor in and these are points of sensitivity and not sensitivity um what i would like to say is that if someone from the utility comes to your place to repair your pipe or your tap after that you probably give that person a small tip some money small money the question sometimes that is that corruption maybe it's not because you have to take into account also the people who are working with these organizations utilities yes and one important point is that um in many cases the staff don't have high salaries that's also a reason which leads to a situation so it has to be a little bit considered what is individually and when you see this happening as a pattern or systematically then definitely the corruption then you need to raise the issue um and i recently shared uh this seminar with the university in namibia and there they talked about like the students of the university if they needed to access data from the government agencies for their research purpose the university has to give them some money and this has been happening over a year and their question they asked was that is this corruption because it has been traditionally established that this part of the process you have to basically what they call the buying the data whereas this is public data which you should be available so this is one of one of the discourse discussion which was there obviously yeah we have to address it but a big case by case probably also look at it thanks benayat this was actually not the last question we have we had a few more questions that kept coming but because we were already in the motion of like doing the q and a i might have missed some of them um and also at this point we need to sort of close down the webinar we are well past our time thank you benayat for your great presentation on for your very patient answering of the questions and um thanks most of all to you the audience for turning up at good numbers and for your questions and comments a recording of the webinar will be available on the water channel and it websites and the youtube channels and if you registered for the webinar and I believe you did because that's the only way you could have joined right so you will all receive links to the webinar recording by email and I think Maria Laura has already posted some links in the chat links to pages where the recording will appear and some information about the next webinar which I believe will be in the first week of December so thanks a lot everyone and see you at the next webinar thanks abraham I just want to mention that since it's the IHE alumni I'd be very happy to see that we have a short post around the topic of integrity and corruption at the IHE stuff thanks thanks everyone thank you bye bye