The Veeduría Distrital is an independent preventive control agency that analyses and seeks to prevent administrative inefficiencies and corruption risks in the city of Bogota. Public Policy of Transparency for Bogota (PPTB), Integrity and No-Tolerance with Corruption, is the first of its kind in the country and the region, it aims to address the institutional weaknesses, prevent, investigate and sanction corrupt practices that involve the public sector, private actors and citizens. This policy is an instrument for the next 10 years that allows the administrations and its agencies to articulate actions that strengthen their capacities and mitigate corruption risks

Bogota’s Public Policy of Transparency, Integrity and No Tolerance with Corruption addresses the institutional weakness in order to prevent, investigate and sanction corrupt practices in the city that involve both the public and private sectors in addition to the citizenship.This public policy is the first tool to ensure the city’s compliance of the SDGs and is comprised of concrete and effective actions aligned with SDG 16.5: Substantially reduce corruption and bribery in all their forms. Overall, this policy has been designed to serve as a general roadmap for Bogota in order for it to fully comply with SDG 16 and place the city as a benchmark for the region and hopefully for other capital cities. Local administrations in Bogota have prioritized actions for the development and strengthening of institutional capacities to prevent and mitigate the occurrence of corrupt practices. This Public Policy is a long-term instrument that articulates interventions and investments for the city in the fight against corruption. The public policy prioritized 11 strategic factors that are contained in four main working areas. Transparency and Open Government.his public policy acknowledges the importance and the guarantee of free access to all public information, in alignment with SDG 16.10: Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements. It seeks to implement guidelines, procedures and mechanisms for handling public information, dissemination of administrative, budgetary and, financial management data, as well as citizen service delivery. Among the topics comprised is the implementation of open data standards for institutional documents, instruments and procedures for filing documentation and advertisement of information and emphasizing in information that allows citizens to acknowledge the different instruments that enable better accountability. This information must be adapted to the citizens’ needs by providing complete and comprehensive elements including differential variables for the minority population. Integrity. The second main goal of the public policy focuses on the promotion of integrity activities that allow citizens to recover their trust in public agencies. These activities must be implemented among public and private actors. This policy focuses its actions in articulating a comprehensive system that involves different actors and guidelines, based on procedures and structures that help to prevent corrupt practices and generates greater legitimacy and trust in the local government. Anti-corruption measures
Recognizing the limitations that Bogota’s public agencies have in investigating and sanctioning corrupt practices, allows their permanence among society. This public policy promotes the implementation of instruments to identify scenarios and practices that generate corruption risks and failures in the institutional design of public agencies. Institutional capacities. To achieve the three working areas described above and overpass difficulties and challenges that may arise in the implementation of this policy, this instrument creates multiple scenarios to promote alliances that led to improvements in administrating processes and establishing agreements among them. In terms of institutions capacities, this policy promotes corruption studies that help identify causes and effects of the phenomenon in the city, allowing stakeholders to make better decisions.

Different actors from the public and private sector as well as the academia and NGOs participated actively as key stakeholders of this public policy. The PPTB involves the fifteen sectors of the city’s administration and its agencies, ranging from The District’s Secretary for Women, Secretary of Health, Secretary of Public Mobility and the Special Unit for Public Service Delivery, among other parties in this endeavor. The 20 districts of Bogota, will also be involved in the policy’s implementation and the three main control agencies such as Personería de Bogota, and Contraloría will monitor its overall progress.

The Veeduría Distrital lead the process of designing this Public Policy in 2013 by elaborating the first public schedule for this process. In 2016, Secretaría General de la Alcaldía Mayor de Bogotá and Secretaría Distrital de Gobierno joined the Veeduría’s effort and drafted Bogota’s Public Policy of Transparency, Integrity, and Non Tolerance with the Corruption jointly. The implementation of this policy consisted of three phases: Preparation (2013-2016): From 2013 to 2016, the Veeduría Distrital established the first guidelines and definitions of the public policy through a participative approach, ensuring the interaction of different sectors such as public agencies, companies, universities, media and citizens. The results of this process led to the construction of a “Proposal for structuring the public policy”. This proposal presented the background, preliminary data and the justification for the implementation of a public policy that agglomerates all strategies to fight corruption practices. Public Agenda (2016-2017): This phase consisted in the collection, systematization and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data. The Veeduría Distrital organized several focus groups to identify the main problem, diagnosis, objectives and strategies of this policy. In 2016, the Veeduría Distrital coordinated four working groups with 92 participants from public corporations and policy leaders to present the policy’s new approach. A second round of six working groups for the discussion of the central problem was held in July 2017, with 90 attendees from different sectors. In November 2017, ten focus groups were held by the Veeduria Distrital with the participation of the 15 sectors of the city’s administration, in addition to two working groups with public servants of Bogota’s localities and two meetings with representatives from the private sector, NGOs and academy. Finally, in March 2018, the Veeduria Distrital organized a citizen’s meeting to receive proposals for the formulation of the action plan, focused on actions aimed at the city’s local mayors. The attendees also discussed their role in the policy’s implementation. Between May and June 2018, 21 public entities attended a series of sectorial working tables to define and agree on individual action plans for each agency based on this public policy. III Formulation (2017-2018): “Diagnosis and identification of strategic factors” was drafted and became the base for the public policy’s document. This document presented a synthesis of the two phases as well as general and specific objectives of the public policy. The document also contains the policy’s action plan with the actions and resources planned for a span of ten years. The public policy’s document has set a mechanism for follow-up and evaluation with the following activities: Monitoring: The three agencies that lead the public policy will be in charge of the follow up. Evaluation: The first evaluation will be performed by the three leading agencies two years after its approval (short-term) A second evaluation will be done in the six-year mark of the policy (mid-term). A final evaluation will be presented in the ten-year mark of the policy (long-term).

Overall, the main result of this process is the enactment of the public policy itself. With this public policy, Bogota has a clear working path towards the fulfillment of the SDGs, and particularly SDG 16, to promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels. In the next ten years, Bogota will achieve the following objectives: Overall objective: To strengthen institutions in order to prevent and mitigate the negative impact of corrupt practices in the public, private sector and citizens. Specific objective. To move towards an open government through the implementation of transparency actions in public management, as to guarantee the right of access to information, participation and citizen collaboration as pillars for the generation of public value. To achieve a sustainable culture of integrity in public servants and citizens that will improve the appropriation of public goods and services. To ensure the implementation of anti-corruption measures for prevention, detection, investigation and sanction of corrupt practices through a collaborative work of public agencies. To strengthen institutional capacities of Bogota’s public agencies in order to articulate processes and existing controls on public and private institutions as well as with the citizenry. For the first specific objective, this policy will focus on improving access to public information, by creating and implementing an Open Government action plan for Bogotá that aims to align the city with international and national standards to consolidate a roadmap that encourages collaboration and co-creation among public agencies and citizens. The policy also proposes the enactment of a strategy to promote the registration of administrative procedures of the city, in order to provide access to those procedures and services provided by the public administration. With the second objective of the policy, the city looks to regain confidence in its institutions and to recognize public values of integrity in the city’s management. The main product of this objective is the development of a strategy for the implementation of an Integrity Code in district public agencies. Secondly, this policy proposes the creation and implementation of a protocol for the development of transformational projects aimed at promoting voluntary changes in perceptions, attitudes, emotions and practices in favor of transparency, integrity and non-tolerance with corruption. The third objective of the policy presents a series of guidelines, actions and tools that seek to prevent corrupt practices in Bogotá. The first product of the this objective is the implementation of an Early Alert System for public management of the city, which will articulate diverse sources of information on public procurement, planning, finance and citizen’s services. Two following products will be the creation and implementation of anti-bribery guidelines and of protocols for whistleblowers’ protection. Lastly, within the fourth specific objective of the policy, the city will work on developing corruption studies with the private sector, NGOs, academia and social organizations in order to enable institutions to build stronger preventive mechanisms for corruption through an innovative methodology.

The current political climate in Bogotá and the country enabled the policy to become more relevant. As corruption becomes a more latent issue in Colombia, to have a tool that allows concrete actions to eradicate this phenomenon, became a priority for Bogotá’s public administration. Another factor that benefited this exercise was the participative approach took for its construction. Multiple stakeholders joined in different instances of consultation that allowed information to be extracted, as well as to guarantee a broad range of participation. This participation enables a better appropriation of the policy since it was created for the citizens and by the citizens. Aditionally, the creation of the policy itself by the Veeduría Distrital, was an enabling factor as it was the baseline for the implementation if the Index of Transparency for Bogota. One major constraint in its construction was the disparity in criteria and analysis presented by different actors on the subject. Several studies by actors in the public and private sector are not often updated. This aspect made it difficult to compare between relevant information and data from different times and the possibility of monitoring different indicators in order to establish a baseline. However, the policy drew information based on the four axes mentioned above, allowing for a more detailed study of standards and to draw not only from empirical studies but also from gathering data based on perception studies and the different focus groups explained above. The policy also determines critical areas where new information needed to be constructed. Actions on this regard were included in the fourth objective of the policy.

The structure of the policy’s action plan begins with the four working areas explained in the objective of the practice, these are developed through 10 concrete results and 104 products to be delivered across fifteen sectors of the city’s administration. Bogota’s Public Policy of Transparency, Integrity and No Tolerance with Corruption is a long-term planning instrument with actions developed from the city’s agencies and the involvement of civil society actors, academia and citizens. It is based on a 10-year action plan, which guarantees its sustainability both structurally and financially. For the implementation of the policy, the city allocated USD 714.982.125 mill. The main sources of funding for the policy come from the investment and operating expenses of the city’s agencies responsible for products established in the action plan. The policy’s model can be easily implemented in other large cities that are interested in applying a set of actions and mechanisms targeted at transparency and anti-corruption. Most importantly, this policy looks to improve the institutional capacities of public administration, by presenting ways to rethink institutional designs and implementing new actions targeted at prevention and promotion of integrity with the public and private sector.

The Veeduria Distrital’s primary task for the city is to create and implement clear guidelines for articulated actions of the government, citizens, public agencies and other stakeholders. This objective is achieved by offering new and innovate opportunities to promote probity in local servants’ actions and improving public management. On the particular issue of corruption, the Veeduria Distrital has pushed for a better understanding of this problematic in the city. Given the complexity of corruption as a phenomenon in Bogotá, a public policy of this nature was necessary. However, this process has reached a wider scope of action, by allowing the city to have: A long-term planning instrument that has been articulated politically and institutionally. Permanent decision-making processes aimed at generating stronger institutional capacities; A prospective vision of the problematic, taking into account its causes and effects on different areas and sectors of the city’s territory and population; Concerted actions with the different agencies of the city; Articulation of interventions and investments of the city linking the private sector and citizens to these efforts; A broad process of participation with the involved actors that responded to a joint effort of citizens to be heard and taken into consideration in public policy processes. In addition, Bogota’s Public Policy of Transparency, Integrity and Non Tolerance with Corruption is widely beneficial for its citizens because: It allows the city to fight the corruption that affects its citizens with effective actions geared at constructing and protecting public assets and resources; The policy allows the creation of tools, processes and procedures to avoid the materialization of corruption risks; Bogotá is the first city in the country to have its own public policy on Transparency, Integrity and Non Tolerance with the Corruption; The policy produces qualified public information about the progress and follows up of all actions taken by the city’s agencies to fight against corruption; It guarantees the right to access to information and citizen’s participation in overseeing the work of the public administration; It strengthens transparency in Bogota’s public management; The policy boosts oversight on public resource management in the city and in the local level; The policy promotes a culture of public integrity and legality for all public servants of the city. This is the first tool that Bogotá has to ensure projects and actions of its public agencies aligned with the SDGs, particularly with SDG 16. The goal of this exercise is to provide all public agencies with effective actions to eradicate corruption and set an example with the PPTB as a roadmap for the city as an innovative methodology that supports local development and improvement of preventive mechanisms for institutions with the hope that it will set a benchmark for other capital cities of the world. Furthermore, this initiative aims to be sustainable in the long term, which guarantees a strong political and financial commitment that seeks to eradicate all corrupt practices in the city.

The Veeduría Distrital has published the official public policy’s document in the following link:
http://veeduriadistrital.gov.co/sites/default/files/files/2019/DocumentoConpesDCPoliticaPublicaTransparencia.pdf
News clips:
- https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/bogota/bogota-implementara-politica-publica-de-transparencia-contra-corrupcion-articulo-828957
- https://www.eltiempo.com/bogota/alcaldia-de-bogota-aprueba-politica-publica-contra-la-corrupcion-301954