In the chase for indicators, crimes are sometimes invented where there are none, so the approaches to assessing the work of employees and units of the Anti-Corruption Service need to be changed radically. VRKNews.kz reports that this was stated on 8 July by Olzhas Bektenov, chairman of the Anti-Corruption Agency of Kazakhstan (Anti-Corruption Service).
According to the head of the Anti-Corruption Service, in the chase for indicators crimes are sometimes invented where there are none. What is forgotten is that every figure in the reports is the fate of a person, of his family and friends.
“It is obvious that the old approach has outlived itself. The approaches to assessing work must be changed radically,” Olzhas Bektenov said at a meeting of the agency's board.
As Bektenov said, the Anti-Corruption Service's territorial departments used to be awarded points for bringing officials to account. The higher the rank of the exposed official, the higher the score.
“This is nonsense! To please the figures, every manager was preoccupied first of all not with solving citizens' pressing problems but with formally achieving target indicators. We were carried away by the process itself, not by the real result. As a result, against a backdrop of good statistics, a real improvement in the corruption situation is not so obvious,” Olzhas Bektenov said.
He stressed that despite serious changes to the Criminal Procedure Code and a review of approaches to registering crimes, the reporting system remained the same.
“People are absolutely not concerned about our indicators of detected crimes and detained persons if they see no effect from it, when there are no real improvements. But if the criteria are set by the number of detected crimes, large figures can create the appearance of successful work,” the agency's chairman says.
It is noted that under quantitative assessment a particular detective has no interest in minimising corruption. On the contrary, to a certain extent it is in his interest to keep corruption schemes in place. That is a reserve for future indicators, for inclusion in the next report.
The head of the agency called for a radical change of the old approaches to assessing the effectiveness of its activity.
