On February 4, the intergovernmental coordination council meeting on the fight against corruption took place in “Tbilisi Marriott”. Members of the council from the public sector (the State Audit Office, Central Election Commission, State Procurement Agency, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development and other) as well as non-governmental and international organizations and representatives of the business sector attended the event.
Discussion of the updated anti-corruption strategy and 2015-2016 action plan also took place on the basis of the 13 strategic priorities of the fight against corruption, coordinated by the of the anti-corruption council, within the framework of the nine thematic working groups.
The State Audit Office is presented in two thematic working groups.
- Prevention of the corruption in public finances and state procurement spheres; and
- Prevention of the political corruption.
Objective of the first working group is the improvement of the state financial resource management and internal financial control in order to prevent corruption and ensure the transparency and accountability during the budget planning and spending process. Within the framework of the 2015-2016 action plan, the priorities of the State Audit Office are:
- Strengthening of the institutional development of the State Audit Office;
- Implementation of the assessment mechanism for financial management and control area as well as internal audit functioning system; planning of the audit activity based on the identified corruption risks;
- Development of the capacities of the Government; increase of the effectiveness of public financial management and ensuring of accountability;
- Development of the Information Technology auditing (IT Audit) mechanism.
Second working group aims at the achieving of the high quality in the financing of the political parties, transparency of the expenditures and also minimizing the corruption practice.
The new policy documents were based on the taken responsibilities within the visa liberalization process, organization for economic cooperation and development of the anti-corruption network (OECD-ACN), Group of States against Corruption, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the recommendations issued by the NGOs and prepared researches.
Anti-corruption council approved the updated anti-corruption strategy, 2015-2016 anti-corruption action plan and new methodology of the monitoring and evaluation of anti-corruption documents.
Members of anti-corruption council got also acquainted with the 2014 anti-corruption council’s activity and Open Government – Georgia forum’s 2014 report. In addition, members of the anti-corruption council were informed by the representative of the Civil Service Bureau regarding the mechanism of the monitoring of declaration.
