The WCO’s flagship Anti-Corruption and Integrity Promotion (A-CIP) Programme underwent an external mid-term evaluation between February and April 2023 as part of its funding agreement with the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad). The evaluation, conducted by KPMG Norway, looked at the Programme’s progress since its kick-off in 2019. With funding support from Norway and Canada, the WCO A-CIP Programme continues to provide direct technical assistance and capacity building support to select WCO Members and generates new tools and instruments that all WCO Members can use in their fight against corruption.
The evaluators conducted detailed assessments that included interviews and surveys with key stakeholders in the 17 Member administrations supported by Norway’s funding through the Programme. They followed the OECD’s development assistance review framework, which looks at several important criteria, including relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability, as well as risk management and cross-cutting aspects of human rights, gender and the environment.
Overall, the evaluators determined that “A-CIP is a very well managed and operated program, and on track to meet its targets. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the program has been implemented more or less according to plan, expanding its operations to additional countries, and inspiring a second batch of country projects supported by another donor. In terms of its results framework, indicators are mostly on track to be met. The review has an overall favorable assessment of the program, with some challenges identified.”
The challenges identified included ensuring the Programme’s extensive country-level key performance indicators remain appropriate, as well as dealing with uncertainties caused by the systemic nature of corruption.
There were many more successes noted, including: “The Programme is relevant to the WCO, recipient countries and supports the larger global development agenda.”; “Country projects are mostly aligned with internal anti-corruption strategies and programs.”; and “In cases of unified tax and customs administrations / revenue authorities, positive spillovers on tax administrations are likely to exist.”
The evaluators also positively acknowledged the Programme’s innovative use of Customs Integrity Perception Surveys (CIPS), which “offer a unique and valuable source of measuring the performance of the Programme.”
Importantly, as a WCO capacity building Programme, the evaluators note that “the WCO capacity building methodology of using member experts proves to be very good value for money” and “the Programme is likely to also have sustainable impact on WCO as an institution, affecting future capacity building activities.”
For more information on the WCO A-CIP Programme and other WCO Capacity Building activities, please contact: capacity.building@wcoomd.org