Lithuania has a placed integrity and the fight against corruption at the forefront of its political priorities in an effort to strengthen citizens’ trust and democratic institutions. Building on previous initiatives, the country has recently adopted the 2022-2033 National Agenda on the Prevention of Corruption (NAPC) to reduce corruption and increase transparency in the public administration.
This report is part of the OECD work on measuring and evaluating public sector integrity strategies. It examines the development process of Lithuania’s NAPC 2022-2033 and the impact achieved in the previous implementation period (2015-2022). Furthermore, it assesses the NAPC’s accomplishments and challenges in priority areas, and distils lessons for the 2022-2033 period. Lithuanian authorities could consider these recommendations when formulating and implementing future policies. The assessments were based on the standards set in the 2017 OECD Recommendation on Public Integrity and the OECD Public Integrity Indicators.
Overall, the NAPC has significantly improved Lithuania’s national anti-corruption and integrity framework encouraging public institutions to take ownership of anti-corruption efforts. However, uneven implementation and co-ordination challenges have lessened its impact. In particular, the NAPC lacks a coherent theory of change and expected outcomes.
This report reflects on how Lithuania could improve both the design and implementation of future strategies and on how to understand the root causes of implementation gaps. It also provides insights for Lithuania’s upcoming Action Plans, which will be providing specific measures to support strategy implementation. The report highlights how to further systematise the process of the NAPC, enhance transparency and ensure the continuous engagement of stakeholders across the policy cycle. It also provides policy makers with practical assessments and recommendations to address a wide range of integrity issues in at-risk areas.
The project was funded by the European Union via the Technical Support Instrument, and implemented by the OECD, in co-operation with the Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support of the European Commission.