The Government Defence Integrity Index (GDI) is the first global analysis of the existence, effectiveness and enforcement of institutional and informal controls to manage the risk of corruption in defence and security institutions. As such, it has a crucial role to play in driving global defence reform.
Countries’ defence sectors are assessed across five different corruption risk areas: political risk, procurement risk, personnel risk, financial risk, and operations risk. The overall average of scores determines the strength of a country’s institutional practices and protocols to manage corruption risks in defence, from A (low risk/strong institutional controls) to F (high risk/weak institutional controls).
The GDI is designed to be a tool for governments seeking to improve their integrity protocols, by identifying key areas of risk – and therefore priority areas for reform – and sharing best practice in good defence governance. The previous iteration of the GDI (previously the Government Defence Anti-Corruption Index) was published in 2015 and assessed defence institutions in over 120 countries worldwide. Of these 120 country assessments, around half were reviewed by the respective government before publication, and around one third ultimately engaged in substantive dialogue with us after the assessments launched.
The GDI has also proved to be a very useful tool for civil society to collaborate with Ministries of Defence, the military and oversight institutions to build their capacity in order to improve transparency and integrity. A broad range of audiences draw on the GDI. It provides rigorous evidence-based recommendations to civil society organisations, research institutions, international organisations, investors, and the media to locate where they need to push for change and help bring about positive change in a sustainable way.
We have extensive experience of using the GDI to support reform efforts and a track record of ensuring our work has a real and lasting impact. In the past, this has included: assisting with drafting or critiquing an integrity action plan, supporting ‘building integrity’ training sessions or workshops, facilitating a consultation process with civil society, organising capacity-building workshops to sensitise civil society on defence integrity, helping to build capacities of parliamentarians to exercise oversight or creating secondment opportunities to enhance officials’ expertise.