Anti-Corruption Laboratories (AC Labs) is a pioneer project and the first Uzbek nationwide effort to examine and assess corruption risks and their factors in areas that impact the everyday lives of people in Uzbekistan. Regional Dialogue has been implementing the project since 2020, with the support of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, the Uzbek nationwide civil society movement Yuksalish, and the Uzbek Anti-corruption Agency.
This project is critical for developing and strengthening corruption risk assessment capacities that would enable Uzbekistan’s civil society and public institutions to apply them in relevant sectors, processes, and organizations to identify, assess, address, manage and act upon corruption and integrity risks.
Regional Dialogue’s objective is to build the methodologies and competencies that have been missing from the toolkit of local organizations and partners, and to empower the public sector institutions and civil society actors to sustainably detect, assess, and manage corruption and integrity risks and the respective risk factors independently.
Another equally important and fundamental objective of the AC Labs is to practically implement the developed methodologies and examine vulnerable areas in the public sector in terms of corruption risks and risk factors. The project assists in designing and implementing social surveys, focus group interviews, legal analysis, practical and efficient public policy recommendations to help minimize the impact of corruption and integrity risks in the public sector through legal and process-based reforms.
The first three cycles of AC Labs, focused on assessing corruption and integrity risks and the respective driving factors in the process of admission to primary schools (2021), the start-up process of establishing a public-private partnership in preschool educational institutions (2022), the process of grading in higher educational institutions (2024) and the process of obstetric health and child delivery in public hospitals (2024). The outcomes of these cycles have been publicly presented and published in three languages (English, Uzbek, and Russian). It is noteworthy that recommendations from these reports have been endorsed by official stakeholders (e.g. responsible ministries and institutions) and included as part of policy papers for reform (e.g. presidential decrees).
In 2024, Regional Dialogue and AC Labs examined corruption and integrity risks in the process of allocation of affordable housing and mortgage subsidies. Besides that, we conducted a follow-up assessment of our very first AC lab project on corruption and integrity risks in admission to primary schools to track the progress and change in the implementation of our anti-corruption public policy recommendations. Both mentioned projects have started in April 2024 and have now concluded.
