06/07/2017 -  Combatting corruption and restoring trust in institutions by upholding the principles of public integrity will be at the heart of a major conference in Athens from 11-12 July 2017.

               

Corruption corrodes our society. It wastes public resources, perpetuates poverty and inequality and blocks equal opportunities. A commitment to public integrity requires the consistent aligning of values and norms that prioritise the public interest over the private concerns of a select few. It is essential to assuring citizens that governments and institutions are working to improve their well-being.

 

The Greece Public Integrity Forum will bring together government officials, business and civil society representatives, academics and other experts to look at how to fight corruption by promoting and upholding integrity in the Public Service.

 

The Forum is open to the media. To register, journalists should contact Laura McDonald, of the OECD Public Sector Integrity Unit.

 

Held at the General Secretariat for Information and Communication, the Forum is co-organised by the OECD and Greece’s General Secretariat Against Corruption with the support of the European Commission.

 

The speakers will include Olga Gerovasili, Greece’s Minister of Administrative Reconstruction and Panagiotis Skourletis, Minister of Interior. Topics under discussion will range from increasing transparency in political finance to whistle-blower protection. Other sessions will include the role of the media and citizen action in the fight against corruption.

 

Promoting transparency through new technologies will be another key theme. The Forum will close with the presentation of awards to winners of a specially organised “Hackathon” on Public Integrity in which students, start-ups and software developers collaborated on new tools to fight corruption. Organised with Harokopio University and the Greek Open Technologies Alliance, the winning designs include an app to navigate through the vast amount of parliamentary documentation on tax; a tool to monitor court trials in real time; and a corruption reporting platform.

 

Further information about the Greece Public Integrity Forum is available here; from Angelos Binis, of the OECD Public Sector Integrity Unit or from the OECD Media Division (tel. + 33 1 4524 9700).