The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has included a module on ethical leadership in the Internal Integrity Component of the fourth national integrity assessment (NIA).

Ethical leadership index, a press release from the ACC states, is incorporated as part of NIA because the ethical competences of leaders are crucial to foster an enabling environment that promotes principles of ethics, integrity and anti-corruption in an agency/organisation.

“The existing components of NIA such as integrity, work and corruption is largely depended on organisational leadership.”

With parameters and questionnaires for ethical leadership developed, the ACC is currently pilot testing the instruments including this new module on ethical leadership.

Researchers in three teams started the pilot testing from February 17 and are expected to cover all the targeted 134 gewogs in 20 Dzongkhags by April 15. The pilot tests are carried out with emphasis on administration and finance services of gewogs including procurement and execution of works and supplies.

NIA is one of the important anti-corruption instruments to measure the level of integrity of an agency/organisation. ACC first adapted the NIA in 2009 from ACRC, South Korea. Since then, NIA is conducted once in every third year in collaboration with National Statistics Bureau.

The national integrity score as per NIA 2016 is 7.95 on a scale of 0-10 (0 means highly corrupt and 10 highly transparent) depicting a very good status of integrity at the national level.

Staff Reporter