Description
Corruption is a definite problem in the Romanian society, which manifests itself strongly in the public sector. The National Agency for Fiscal Administration (NAFA), the institution responsible for the collection of most of the budget revenues, is one of the most exposed to corruption, considering its extremely vast and complex structure and its field of activity. In this context, NAFA’s General Directorate for Integrity (GDI) was created in 2012, with the objective of promoting integrity in the exercise of its functions and prevent and fight corruption. The purpose of this project is to increase the administrative capacity of GDI and to raise awareness among NAFA’s staff and the society about measures taken for preventing and fighting corruption and professional ethics violations, through cooperation with the Norwegian Tax Administration. The project will provide for identifying corruption vulnerabilities, specific trainings and study visits, the development of methodologies, procedures and IT tools, endowment with equipment and awareness on anti-corruption measures.
Summary of project results
The project purpose was to increase the administrative capacity of the General Directorate for Integrity (GDI) within NAFA and to raise awareness among NAFA’s employees and the Romanian society in general about measures taken for preventing and fighting corruption and professional ethics violations within NAFA, through cooperation with Tax Norway. GDI aims to do this on the two target groups as follows: - Increasing education in the corruption area among employees of NAFA through training activities; - Increasing awareness among taxpayers about the negative effects of corruption. The expected outcomes of the project were: • Increasing the capacity to fulfill specific activities and the level of training of GDI; • Improving the activity of GDI by developing methodologies and mechanisms to prevent and fight corruption and professional ethics violation; • Increasing awareness among NAFA’s staff regarding the risks of breaching professional standards and committing acts of corruption; • Reducing the negative perception of the population regarding the level of corruption of NAFA’s staff; • Raising awareness among population about the risk of committing acts of corruption and the proactive role of GDI to reduce the phenomenon of corruption; • Promoting the GDI mission and increase the GDI visibility The outputs/results achieved within the project through the main activities are: • Development of an evaluation study regarding corruption vulnerabilities within NAFA - focusing on risk analysis and identifying corruption vulnerabilities; • Fully functional logistics purchased - the most important to be mentioned are: the IT platform, the cars, the desktops and laptops, multi-functional printers, furniture, etc.; • GDI and NAFA staff trained - 130 civil servants were trained, and other 450 were attended the 15 training sessions at local level; • IT application for carrying out specific activities of the GDI developed and implemented - for monitoring the implementation of the measures recommended by the control structures; • Awareness campaign against corruption within NAFA at a national and local level - media campaign (TV, radio and online spots), 9 information sessions, and information materials; • Standards, methodologies, working procedures for prevention and fighting corruption and professional ethic violations developed or improved with the support of the Norwegian partners; • 6 Study visits (experience exchange) carried out in European countries (Norway, Poland, the UK, Netherlands, Italy, Denmark) attended by 52 NAFA civil servants.
Summary of bilateral results
All the activities requested from the partners to work very closely together in order to obtain good results and now, at the end of the project, taken into consideration the objectives achieved, we can say that the partnership was very successful and that these months spent working together have managed to create a good collaboration relation between the two tax administrations, which will give the possibility, in the future, to follow up this project or to implement other projects as partners. The project has definitely contributed to strengthen the relations between Romania and Norway, in particular the relation between NAFA and Tax Norway. Tax Norway was involved in the following activities: 1. A Norwegian project coordinator (NPC) coordinated the activities for which Tax Norway was responsible and followed up the project and its progress. 2. Norwegian experts have given their input in the activity of developing the evaluation study. 3. The IT Norwegian experts have given their input in the activities regarding the procurement of the IT equipment (the IT platform) and the development of the IT application. 4. The training sessions in the integrity field were in the responsibility of the Norwegian partner, who provided the lectors and also participated at the events. 5. The Norwegian partner had an important contribution in developing the awareness campaign. Also, experts from Norway participated at the information sessions and gave presentations. 6. They contributed to the improvement of the standards, methodologies and working procedures of GDI. 7. The Norwegian partner organized and participated to all the study visits and also participated at the workshop organized in Timișoara. 8. They participated to all the meetings of the Steering Committee and to the 3 conferences organised during the project implementation period.