CIVITAS Georgica

On July 22, 2010 Functional Analysis Workshop II was held.  It was lead by the two consultants from Civitas Georgica and attended by 9 guiding coalition members.  This meeting had two purposes:

1. to meet new guiding coalition members – There were some human resource changes as the result of local elections in May 2010 and some key positions were occupied by new people. After consultations with the Mayor we decided to involve new people in the guiding coalition based on their new position in municipality rather than involving old members, who have been elected to local council and thus have no executive/decision making power anymore.  Namely, the chairman of the guiding coalition was changed, since the mayor has new deputy now: Mr. Nugzar Glonti.  Also the head of property management department was replaced and the new person now is Mr. Zaza Kavzinadze.
2. To present results of the three surveys (vulnerability analysis by guiding coalition members and municipal employees and customer (public) satisfaction survey.) and decide together on the areas, which local government will focus on to eliminate opportunities to corruption and achieve organizational integrity.

The first half of the meeting we spent on recalling the progress of their work, old guiding coalition members explaining to the new ones what stages they have went through and where they are now.

Following this, consultants presented results of the surveys. A lively and active discussion followed. Some members were surprised/not pleased with the results. Particularly interesting was comparing opinions of themselves, regular municipal employees and citizens. Special focus was placed on problematic areas that appeared in all three or at least two survey results.  Afterwards, guiding coalition members analyzed and weighted each issue and acknowledging difficulties discarded some areas that they can do nothing about (as  e.g. some require legislative changes on national level etc.) Finally, the following issues were selected for deeper analysis and improvement:

1. Human resources management:

• Recruiting/dismissal
• Promotion, bonuses, assessment

2. Property management (including land and leasing issues)

3. Improvement of municipal territory

• Selection of infrastructure projects
• Control of implementation/monitoring of implementation of infrastructure projects

We agreed to meet in September and work on getting to roots of these problems and finding reasons why these areas are viewed as most vulnerable to corruption by them, their employees and general public.  Overall, the meeting was very satisfactory. Some pictures of the event can be seen below:

1. Municipal employee survey

As the result of Functional Analysis Workshop 1, guiding coalition members identified some areas vulnerable to corruption as described in our previous blog post. However, we wanted to validate results of this analysis by comparing it with similar survey of municipal employees as well as public opinion survey about perceived level of corruption in their local government.

Originally it was planned that guiding coalition members, most of whom are heads of departments within municipality will perform municipal employee survey themselves, using the similar corruption vulnerability analysis questionnaire, which they themselves filled out. However, this time, taking into account suggestions made during Functional Analysis Workshop I, we made the questionnaire more detailed, breaking down each local government function into sub-functions, to avoid any misinterpretation.

However, after analyzing the questionnaires received from municipal employees, it became obvious that we would have to conduct the survey of employees again ourselves, because collected data was unreliable. Many questionnaires were filled out incorrectly, some rows were left blank, and some numbers seemed completely random.  It is possible that guiding coalition members either did not provide enough explanation of the corruption formula or did not give clear instructions to their employees how to complete questionnaires, which resulted in confusing responses.

Thus, we packed our things and went to Lanchkhuti for the whole week of July 19-23, 2010.

We started by conducting municipal employee survey ourselves and interviewed 20 employees, taking proper time to explain corruption formula and the vulnerability analysis process.  Moreover, guiding coalition members decided to fill out the more detailed version of questionnaires as well, to make the results more easily comparable.

Next we spent the whole day analyzing the data. The results were as follows:

Corruption Vulnerability Assessment by Municipal Employees, most corrupt functions/procedures:

At the same time the new survey of guiding coalition members yielded the following pictures with respect to corruption:

As can be seen from the two table above there are lots of issues in common.

2. Public Opinion survey

Public opinion survey was conducted by students using questionnaires prepared by consultants and based on 1 day coaching that consultants provided to the students. Total of 200 respondents were interviewed, of both genders, different ages, with different levels of education. Some were interviewed entering or exiting town hall, others shops or other places of public gathering.  (Originally it was planned to get responses from additional 400 people via newspaper, however it became practically impossible to do it since the questionnaire was too long (4 pages) and newspaper refused to print it as it would require the space of the whole issue ).

On July 21-22, 2010 we analyzed the 200 questionnaires and summarize the results in the form of the presentation (survey_results_eng), which we showed to guiding coalition during Functional Workshop 2.

Moreover, for comparison we included in the presentation the results of corruption vulnerability analysis performed by the guiding coalition members as well as municipal employees. As can be seen in presentation (survey result eng) there were some areas/issues that showed up in all three survey results.

Function Workshop 1 was held with the guiding coalition of Lanchkhuti municipality on April 23^rd, 2010. We were lucky this time, as we had Nicole Rate and Adrea Buzec from FPDL visiting us from Romania. On Thursday 22nd, we had a rare opportunity to go through the workshop design with them and receive some feedback, suggestions for improvement. It was very helpful, thanks!!!

Apart from professional help of course, we were very glad to see good friends again and welcome them first time in Georgia! We spent several wonderful evening together.

The Functional Workshop 1 was quite successful. We had some changes in composition of the group: the deputy mayor had to resign since he is taking part in local elections on May 30, 2010 and according to Georgian legislation, he has no right to serve as executive. Thus, he was absent from the meeting, which on one hand was to our advantage, since he usually tries to dominate the conversation and discussion.  The other members of guiding coalition were present and quite involved in the process, in particular heads of the following departments: finance and budgeting; infrastructure, procurement and property.

It should be mentioned that it was the first time we started actively introducing and using term corruption with the group. Before, we were more focusing on internal structure and organizational assessment of Lanchkhuti local government. Thus, we were a little bit nervous, how they would take it and careful in using the wording: stressing “the opportunities” for corruption rather than existence of corruption.

Surprisingly, we faced much less resistance from the group than expected. The term “corruption” did not scare them away. Although several members tried to point out that with existing relationships and people who work for town hall corruption is unimaginable, but facilitators directed this conversation into assessment of “possibilities for corrupt behavior, if all of existing staff members change.”, which broke down the opposition.

The agenda of the day is attached. agenda_eng

The meeting started with Nicole Rata congratulating Lanchkhuti local government for their courage to participate in the project and talk openly about corruption, followed by brief outline of Craiova experience. Then facilitators started discussion about local government functions, deliberately distinguishing them from responsibilities of separate departments (this was done to later make the process of assessing vulnerability to corruption easier, so that participants are not pointing fingers at particular departments represented in guiding coalition, but are evaluating the general functions, which can be shared by several departments of local government). After the functions were identified (the group added several to the list proposed by facilitators), the term corruption was introduced through exercise. Participants in groups were asked to draw their associations/attitudes towards the word corruption.  Their drawings are listed below.

As we can see all of them associate corruption with something negative. This was followed by formal presentation on corruption and its forms as well as corruption IQ test.  As expected, such forms of corruption as nepotism (rooted in culture/traditions) and “gift of gratitude” vs “bribe” provoked questions and disagreement between the participants. Several cases were discussed and analyzed.

After the lunch, facilitators introduced corruption formula and explained how to apply it. Then participants were given time to assess their local government’s functions using the formula.  According to participant assessment Public Procurement was identified as most vulnerable for corruption, followed by issuing permits, local tax collection and human resource management (see table below):

During discussion, which followed, these results were analyzed. Participants mentioned that infrastructure management was not assessed as vulnerable to corruption, because one of its main components was procurement (so some may have assessed infrastructure procurement in procurement function). Since it was agreed to conduct the wider assessment of vulnerability to corruption by other staff member of local government (this will be done by guiding coalition members themselves, among their staff) facilitators promised to split infrastructure procurement from other functions of infrastructure management, to avoid duality of interpretation. At the end of the day guiding coalition members were shown the graph of public spending split according to local government functions.  Particular attention was paid on social assistance spending v.s. prevention measure spending (e.g. on natural disasters). The workshop ended with a wrap-up and the homework.

Overall, the workshop was quite successful and is set good foundation for the participants to see and analyze possibilities of corruption in their local government.

On March 5, 2010  Building Guiding Coalition Workshop was held in Lanchkhuti Municipality.

The meeting started at 13:00 sharp and all participants were on time (we were pleasantly surprised by this knowing Georgian  “punctuality” in general).  We were slightly surprised to see several new faces (compared to previous meeting), but deputy mayor explained that unfortunately heads of two departments were out of town and had to be substituted by other members of their departmenst.  We highlighted the importance of all members of guiding coalition to stay committed and be present at all meetings and suggested that may be we should make some changes to the original list of members,  to substitute those who are “super busy” at work with maybe deputies who are more available and will be more committed to take part in the work of guiding coalition.

We started by getting to know each other better exercise, asking participants to name what they consider their major professional achievements during work for the Lanchkhuti local government organization. Participants liked this exercise, though the process was a little manipulated by the deputy mayor, who talked a lot about achievements of local government as a whole as well as accomplishments of his staff, but not himself (we had to push him back on track several times to talk about his personal accomplishments).

We than briefly presented the process of leading organizational change through the famous  “penguin story” (“Our Iceberg is Melting”  by John Kotter), which provoked lively discussion about methodology used in the story among the participants.

This was followed by an exercise where participants split in two teams had to construct the process of leading the organizational change.  They were given cards with different steps of the process and they had to put them in order.  The results of the two team were different, so very active discussion followed.

Following this, we then had to break for 1.5 hours for lunch and also for the guiding coalition members to attend to some of their daily responsibilities. This was their special request and all of them (except deputy mayor) promised to return from break on time. And they kept the promise.

After the break consultant proposed several exercises,  so that participants can assess their personal strengths and weaknesses and evaluate how powerful are they as a team (this was achieved though an exercise in which each member had to state what powers other members are perceived to possess and an exercise in which personal strength and weaknesses were summarized on one flipchart and negative traits were canceled out by opposite positive traits possessed by some other member of the team).  Participants willingly participated in both of these exercises and completed the tasks with full responsibility and discussed things eagerly.

The meeting ended with giving out the homework for the next time and agreeing for the next meeting to be held on March 25th, 2010. The meeting lasted for about 3.5 hours (excluding break).

Overall consultants are satisfied with the meeting as they managed to trigger participants interest towards the process and give them some food for thought.

On February 17 consultants Giorgi and Helen met with Gamgebeli of Lanckhuti municipality Mr. Giorgi Goguadze and explained to him in detail the project content and the commitment required from Lanckhuti local government. Deputy Gamgebeli Mr. Zviad Apkhazava also attended the meeting.

Gamgebeli welcomed the project launch in Lanchkhuti and expressed his readiness to assist consultants in their work.  He particularly liked that project is not providing external expert advice but is focusing is on using local municipality staff for diagnosis and treatment of all existing or potential problems with municipality services.

Together with Gamgebeli the list of members of Guiding Coalition was constituted, which currently looks as follows:

1. Mr. Zviad Apkhazava, Deputi Gamgebeli as leader of the group
2. Mr. David Chakashua, head of infrastructure service
3. Ms Lia Imnadze, head of organizational service (it also involves human resource management)
4. Ms Maia Apkhazava, head of procurement Service
5. Mr. Kakha Chkhartishvili, lead specialist, Finance and Budgetign Service
6. Ms Maka Gogichaishvili, head of Social service
7. Ms Eter Chkonia, head of public relations department
8. Mr. Amiran Gigineishvli, local councilor from Jurukveti teritorrial entity.

On Februrary 18, 2010 first meeting with the guiding coalition was also held. Gamgebeli, Mr.Giorgi Goguadze introduced the consultants to the group, who presented the project and explained level of responsibility and intestity of work for the group. The group reaction was positive, everyone seemed interested to participate.

The next meeting was scheduled for March 5.

The pilot consulting project “Cooperation for Development: Working together for organizational integrity and preventing corruption” has started in Lanchkhuti municipality. The similar project is implemented simultaneously in three countries: Georgia, Croatia and Poland with expert support of FPDL -Romania and World Bank and financially supported by local government initiative of OSI.

The project based on methodology developed by Robert Klitgaard of Harvard Kennedy School of Government and popularized by Mayor Ronald MacLean Abaroa, who successfully applied it in La Paz, Bolivia, is first project of this type implemented in Georgia. The project treats corruption as development issue, which can be fully eliminated and/or prevented only by building organizational integrity of public institutions i.e. establishing procedures and reward/punishment mechanisms that leave no opportunities for engaging in corrupt behavior.

The project is using Guiding Coalition of municipality staff and local councilors as a driving force for the process of analyzing local government organization, identifying the problematic areas and developing solutions. It involves one year systematic work by Guiding Coalition facilitated by anti-corruption experts. An Action Plan aimed at preventing corruption and improving local government services will be an output of the project.