Long-term Strategies

Briones noted the need for long-tenn strategies. She pointed out that corruption is not exclusive to the government: 

There are two parties to corruption. the government sector and the private sector. The latter is the corrupter and the former the corruptee. Oftentimes they reverse roles. Historically, efforts to eliminate corruption have always been directed towards public servent... In order to be effective effort to discipline the government should also be directed toward the private sector(Briones 1987)

Limiting Opportunities for Wrongdoing

Briones' recommendations include: 

• Review and identify opportunity areas for graft and corruption. For example. decisions involving financial outlays create opportunities-awarding of contracts. purchasing of equipment. financing of large projects. and so forth. Once these area.-; are identified. the agency head can plug the deficiencies which invite irregularities. 
  
  

• Review and improve operating procedul;es and prl)Cesses. Review and improve rules and regulations, 
  
  

• Break up known syndicates. 
  
  

• Upgrade professional competence, public accountability. and morale among employees, 
  
  

• Create an administrative culture conducive to honesty and integrity. and 
  
  

• Learn from the experiences of agency heads who have had some success in fighting corruption. 

Leadership 

Briones emphasized the impol1ance of leadership-political. bureaucratic. and social. If one grants archaic origins to corruption, any national solution presupposes leadership of a high order-typically. the intervention of the chief of state.

The Composition of the Watchdog Organization 

An important issue is whether monitoring should be performed by government auditors. private sector auditors, or a combination of the two. In the United Kingdom, as in the United States. independent public accountants play an important role in auditing large institutions. Some doubt the efficacy of the (previously mentioned) reporting requirement which has been made incumbent upon public accountants. Martin French ( 1986. p. 90) has noted that "most specialists are still critical of highly image-conscious banks." 

Another English writer is more explicit: 

The new legislation seeks to enlist the support of auditors in carrying out supervisory functions......Having identified the auditor's public duty, the government leaves to the auditors how that duty should be implemented. Clearly, public -: duties should not be formulated by self serving auditors, ..despite painful lessons , ....which surely point to the absolute: futility of relying on voluntary behavioral norms of any kind-the government is seeking to agree non-statutory guidelines with the auditing profession. We predict that this official preference for cozy informal undertakings will be discarded, after the next major banking upheaval ("Rapid Change in U.K." 1986). 

Press comments notwithstanding, the enlistment in the corruption fighting process of individuals, including public accountants and law enforcement personnel who represent a blend of disciplines, enhances prospects for success. In major U .S. federal departments, a separate inspector general supervises assistants responsible for special investigations. In London, teams have been set up to cope with burgeoning fraud; Fraud Investigation Groups (FIGs), consisting of police and specialists have been formed to look at specific cases. Possibly reflecting this increased effort, the Director of Public Prosecutions, the U .K. prosecuting authority, revealed that reported allegations of serious fraud doubled since 1983 (French 1986). 

Coordination 

Government audits should be coordinated on a national, state, or regional basis. For example, the State of Virginia successfully introduced the position of State Internal Auditor. This official monitors the quality of audits performed within state agencies, sees to audit research, and helps prescribe training and technical standards. Other elements of a national anticorruption program include: 

1. Involve both the public and private sectors in a contemporaneous attack on bureaucratic corruption.
   
    

2. Prescribe standards of internal control; the standards established by New York state represent a convenient model (New York 1987). 
   
   

3. Upgrade and train professional staff, possibly at specialized institutions. 
   
   

4. Create interdisciplinary core groups responsible for interagency coordination, training, technical assistance, research, and, most of all, quality control. 
   
   

5. Focus the audit effort on high- risk/high-publicity areas of exposure. 
   
   

6. Disseminate what has been accomplished. 
   
   

7. Support realistic laws which adequately define criminal behavior, especially in connection with computer-based processing. 
   
   

8. Encourage public awareness. 
   
   

9. Support adequate budgets for security personnel. 
   
   

10. Develop hardware, software, and other products likely to make corruption and fraud more difficult.