The Government Defence Integrity Index (GDI) measures levels of corruption risk in national defence establishments. Research for each country is conducted by an expert assessor using a standard set of questions and scoring rubric. The assessment is then independently reviewed by at least two expert peer reviewers and, where possible, the Transparency International national chapter. We also invite governments to conduct a review of the assessment and submit additional information.
Transparency International Defence & Security recognises that information on defence issues is highly secretive. We consider a lack of transparency in the defence structures to pose as significant a corruption risk as the lack of structure itself. The level of independently verifiable information has therefore directly impacted the scoring on each question. Finally, it is worth noting that secrecy can make case studies and examples difficult to find, and may mean that they are slow to be exposed by journalists, researchers, or the law. For that reason, indicators may not be assigned a score due to a lack of evidence, though this measure is used sparingly.
Each country is assessed across 77 questions, with 200+ underlying indicators that delimit the scope of inquiry. The questionnaire is based on our typology of defence corruption, which defines five main areas of corruption risk:
- Political risk
- Financial risk
- Personnel risk
- Operations risk
- Procurement risk
The scoring rubric provides 5 levels of scoring for each indicator from 0-100, with the highest score indicating best practice for the area. Indicator scores are aggregated using a simple aggregation method (no weighting) to determine the 77 question scores, the risk area scores, and the overall country score.
Scores are assigned to a band from A to F, which is intended to reflect the level of corruption risk in defence sector institutions and practices.
The GDI Methods Paper provides a detailed explanation of the rationale and methodology behind the index.
Explore the indicators that make up the 2020 Government Defence Integrity Index on the GDI Indicator page, or download the 2020 GDI Questionnaire to see the indicators and scoring rubric applied to each assessment.