Anti‑Corruption and Integrity Outlook 2026: United States
Table of contents
The US adopted the U.S Strategy on Countering Corruption in December 2021. The National Security Council continues to co-ordinate inter-agency implementation of the strategy, while the Department of State is responsible for the implementation of a range of anti-corruption efforts abroad.
The Office of Government Ethics oversees the executive branch ethics programme, which is responsible for preventing and resolving financial conflicts of interest, while the Office of Management and Budget is responsible for internal control policy in consultation with the Government Accountability Office, which serves as the supreme audit institution. The Department of Justice is responsible for criminal matters related to the financing of political parties and election campaigns, as well as for the enforcement component of anti-corruption, while the Federal Election Commission oversees the financing of political parties and election campaigns at the federal level.
The Department of Justice also supervises implementation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, while the House Committee on Ethics and the Senate Select Committee on Ethics supervise compliance with the Lobbying Disclosure Act and conflict-of-interest requirements applicable to members of Congress. A supervisory framework for public access to information is in place, with both the Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy and the Office of Government Information Services within the National Archives and Records Administration responsible for overseeing compliance with federal access-to-information requirements.
Note: 2025 data or latest year available. Data for judicial integrity, prosecutorial integrity and disciplinary system are not available.
Source: OECD Public Integrity Indicators Database (data extracted on 7 March 2026).
Data on where the United States integrity system is strongest and could be most improved can be found at the link below:
Note: 2025 data or latest year available.
Source: OECD Public Integrity Indicators Database (data extracted on 7 March 2026).
The United States fulfils 53% of criteria on regulations, and 43% of criteria in practice, compared to the OECD averages of 38% and 32%, respectively.
The U.S. Strategy on Countering Corruption establishes objectives to mitigate public integrity risks in public financial management, public procurement, fraud in the public sector and the private sector, public corporations, state-owned enterprises or public-private partnerships. However, it does not establish strategic objectives for mitigating public integrity risks in HR management or internal control and risk management. The strategy contains a situation analysis identifying existing public integrity risks and underwent an extended consultation process. Both the Office of Government Ethics and the Department of Justice provided inputs during the consultation process.
The strategy has an action plan with the Department of State identified as the lead organisation for each objective’s implementation, monitoring and evaluation. However, the strategy does not set target values for all outcome-level indicators and does not include estimates for capital and operational expenditures No monitoring reports containing information on implementation for the strategy currently exist.
Note: 2025 data or latest year available.
Source: OECD Public Integrity Indicators Database (data extracted on 7 March 2026).
The United States fulfils 60% of criteria on regulations, and 67% of criteria in practice, compared to the OECD averages of 43% and 38%, respectively.
The United States defines lobbying activities in the regulatory framework and establishes cooling off periods for public officials, but the cooling off period for lobbyists was rescinded by Executive Order 13989. Sanctions for both breaches of standards for transparency and integrity in lobbying and breaches of political finance and election campaign regulations are defined and proportional to the severity of the offence.
In practice, a supervisory function in central government oversees transparency of lobbying activity issues consisting of the Lobbying Disclosure Act and the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The two bodies that supervise these Acts and receive claims are the Department of Justice for the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and the House and Senate for the Lobbying Disclosure Act. However, the House and Senate refer to the DC U.S. Attorney’s Office for enforcement of the Lobbying Disclosure Act. Lobbyists can register online, and the information disclosed by lobbyists in the registers includes their name, organisation, domain of intervention, type of lobbying activities, budget for these activities, and pieces of legislation and regulation targeted.
Beneficial ownership information is not publicly available: the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) mandates beneficial ownership information reporting of certain U.S. entities to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). FinCEN maintains this data in a non-public central registry and may disclose it only to authorised government agencies, regulators, and – with the company’s consent – financial institutions.
Note: 2025 data or latest year available.
Source: OECD Public Integrity Indicators Database (data extracted on 7 March 2026).
The United States fulfils 100% of criteria on conflict-of-interest regulations, and 89% on practice, compared to the OECD average of 80% and 45%, respectively.
The Standards of Conduct list incompatibilities between public functions and other public or private activities, defines circumstances and relationships that can lead to conflict-of-interest situations for public officials, and establishes the obligation to manage them. The regulations also establish public financial disclosure requirements, including persons required to file, the contents of the declarations, the procedure for filing, sanctions for failure to file or filing false declarations, and review of declarations. Furthermore, according to the Standards of Conduct, any member of the cabinet, Congress, and the Supreme Court, as well as any public employee in a high-risk position must submit an interest declaration.
Regarding implementation, all members of the cabinet and all members of Congress have submitted interest declarations for the past six years, and all members of the Supreme Court have submitted interest declarations for the past four years. However, not all declarations are submitted electronically. The Office of Government Ethics verified 81% of declarations filed during the latest two full calendar years and issued recommendations for all conflict-of-interest cases detected within 12 months.
Note: 2025 data or latest year available.
Source: OECD Public Integrity Indicators Database (data extracted on 7 March 2026).
The United States fulfils 60% of criteria on regulations, and 86% of criteria in practice, compared to the OECD averages of 76% and 58%, respectively.
The Federal Election Campaign Act regulates that sanctions for breaches of political finance and election campaign regulations are defined and proportional to the severity of the offence, electoral candidates can be held personally liable for breaches and be sanctioned, and regulations ban contributions from foreign states and enterprises, and from publicly owned enterprises. The Act also requires that parties and or candidates must report their finances funding and expenses during electoral campaigns. Moreover, the Act does not ban anonymous donations nor require that all contributions be registered and reported. Finally, regulations do not set out that electoral campaign expenses for parties candidates and third parties are limited to a ceiling, nor do regulations set a threshold for personal contributions to candidates personal campaigns.
In terms of implementation of political finance safeguards in practice, the US performs well. The Federal Election Commission has certified auditors on its payroll and has published information on the number of cases related to breaches of political finance regulations, the number of investigations conducted, and a breakdown of the different types of sanctions issued. All political parties have submitted annual accounts within the timelines defined by national legislation for the past five years, and accounts related to elections for the past two election cycles. Financial reports from all political parties are publicly available from one single online platform in a user-friendly format.
Note: 2025 data or latest year available.
Source: OECD Public Integrity Indicators Database (data extracted on 7 March 2026).
The United States fulfils 67% of criteria on regulations and 54% of criteria in practice, compared to the OECD averages of 72% and 62%, respectively.
The Freedom of Information Act regulates that the only restrictions to access to public information allowed are listed by law; these are in line with the Tromsø Convention. The Act establishes statutory deadlines for processing requests for information, mandates that information holders provide information in the requested format and ensures that requesters are not required to provide justification for their requests. The right to appeal to a federal district court against refusal or inactivity of an administrative body is also established. The Freedom of Information Act also defines a list of datasets and mandatory information to be disclosed, and primary legislation specifies that Government data are “open by default”, except for cases defined in the regulatory framework. However, the Act does not provide that private persons carrying out public duties are holders of public information, and in some cases, fees may be charged for information request.
The Office of Information Policy and the Office of Government Information Services are responsible for public information issues. Additionally, statistical data on requests for access to information and decisions have been aggregated and published for the past three years, and inspections of compliance were conducted within the latest full calendar year. The Administrator of General Services is responsible for open data policy and it’s monitoring. Publicly available datasets include the state budget, results of national elections, public tenders announced and awarded, the company registry, and asset and interest declarations. However, Cabinet Secretaries agendas, lobbying data, land registry information and consolidated versions of laws are not proactively disclosed.
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This work is published under the responsibility of the Secretary-General of the OECD. The opinions expressed and arguments employed herein do not necessarily reflect the official views of the Member countries of the OECD.
This document, as well as any data and map included herein, are without prejudice to the status of or sovereignty over any territory, to the delimitation of international frontiers and boundaries and to the name of any territory, city or area.
The statistical data for Israel are supplied by and under the responsibility of the relevant Israeli authorities. The use of such data by the OECD is without prejudice to the status of the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and Israeli settlements in the West Bank under the terms of international law.
Kosovo: This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244/99 and the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on Kosovo’s declaration of independence.
The full book is available in English: OECD (2026), Anti-Corruption and Integrity Outlook 2026: Harnessing the Integrity Advantage, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/16708b78-en.
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