The government has launched a new anticorruption initiative for the public sector. The latest campaign, announced Tuesday by Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, is focused on preventing corruption by reinforcing monitoring on public systems.
Calling the new drive a “corruption vaccination” program, Hwang said it represented a shift in the government’s anticorruption fight from exposure and punishment to surveillance and prevention.
What the government means by vaccination is installing and activating enhanced monitoring systems in public organizations. Just as vaccinations prevent infectious diseases, it hopes increased monitoring will prevent corruption.
The vaccination program targets public systems in 16 areas that manage 240 trillion won ($198 billion). The government estimates the program, if implemented successfully, would save 5 trillion won of taxpayer money.
The government has unveiled four vaccination projects. The first one calls for setting up two-track real-time monitoring systems on large-scale state-promoted infrastructure projects, including the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics and high-speed subway construction in Seoul.
For defense procurement projects, the government already announced a plan in October last year to create a surveillance team. The plan, however, was met with skepticism at the time because the team would not be able to operate independently as it would be put under the head of the Defense Acquisition Program Administration.
The second vaccination project is about beefing up risk management systems at public institutions that manage large-scale funds, such as Korea Post, which controls assets amounting to 105 trillion won.
The third pillar of the program is building an information sharing system among government offices by 2017 to prevent fraud in distributing state subsidies, welfare assistance, research and development subsidies and unemployment benefits.
Strengthening internal control at powerful government agencies, such as the Fair Trade Commission, constitutes the fourth project. This is intended to prevent them from abusing their power.
The latest anticorruption campaign is well conceived as it is focused on building the corruption-preventing infrastructure in the public sector.
Prevention is much more important than punishment in fighting corruption, as it is often impossible to remedy the damages done by the misconducts of officials.
To prevent corruption, stepping up monitoring efforts is essential. But enhanced monitoring is not without its defects. Too much surveillance could increase red tape and impede progress in implementing state-promoted projects. It could also make officials feel timid in doing their jobs. The government needs to take these matters into consideration in strengthening monitoring systems.
It also needs to remember that transparency is probably the best preventive measure against corruption, just as sunlight is the best disinfectant.
