Community integrity: it’s not just about corruption. Forum in Lubny

Why residents should understand not only where budget money was spent, but also why their community chose to invest in this particular project

Genuine community integrity begins not on Prozorro, but long before the first tender is announced. This idea became the key message of the regional forum “Integrity in the Community: From Principles to Practical Action”, held on 11 September in Lubny. The RCERBS Foundation team, which works in its home city and across Ukraine as part of the “Recovery Window” Grand Coalition, joined the discussion to change the conventional view of transparency in reconstruction.

There was a lot of talk at the forum about corruption prevention, anti-corruption bodies and European experience. But after every discussion like this, a very pragmatic question remains: how can an ordinary resident see integrity in the day-to-day work of their community?

Not just “How much was spent?” but also “Why did they decide to do it?”

Let’s imagine a typical situation. A community plans to spend significant funds on the reconstruction of a school. Residents can check the procurement on Prozorro, see the tender winner and the cost of the works, and later monitor the quality of the repairs. This is important, but it is only the end of the story.

The main questions arise long before the tender:

• Why did this particular school become priority No. 1?

• How many children will be studying there in 5 or 10 years’ time?

• How much does the community spend on its upkeep today, and what will change after the repairs?

• Were alternatives considered, and why was reconstruction on this particular scale chosen?

If there are no answers, monitoring only the final stage — procurement — is no longer enough. Genuine integrity in public investment begins long before the money reaches the accounts.

The most important decisions are made before the money appears

We are used to thinking of transparency as keeping track of hryvnias already spent. But it is just as important to understand how a project got onto the priority list in the first place.

If a community has 30 project ideas but resources for only three, why does the reconstruction of the administrative building come first rather than the water main in critical condition? Why build a new facility instead of modernising an existing one? Has anyone calculated how much the new building will cost the budget every year once it is commissioned?

It is a matter of the quality of management decisions. A choice made with integrity is always based on data, has a clear rationale and follows an open prioritisation logic.

The key principle:

Oversight after the money is spent answers the question: “What happened?”.

Transparent project preparation lets us ask much earlier: “Why are we going to do this?”

Residents don’t need to read 100 pages of documents

Formally, information in communities is often open. On the website you can find a 180-page Development Strategy, a Municipal Energy Plan, the budget and dozens of tables. But an ordinary person will not spend days analysing them.

Real transparency is when things are explained to people in plain language:

Problem ⟶ Verified data ⟶ Proposed project ⟶ Expected result

And ideally, this information should be available at all times, rather than disappearing after perfunctory public hearings.

Digital tools: how Project Navigator is changing the approach

This is precisely the logic RCERBS specialists are working on within the Project Navigator platform. We aim to move from a conventional, passive “wish list” to a system where a project’s entire journey is visible:

• What real problem does it solve?

• How ready is it for implementation?

• Which documents or approvals are still missing?

• What is the next step the community needs to take?

For a municipality, it is a convenient investment management tool; for a donor, a clear map of project maturity; and for residents, a simple, visual way to scrutinise not only spending but also the soundness of public investment.

Integrity cannot simply be “imported”

The forum devoted considerable attention to European experience. However, mechanically copying foreign models without taking into account the realities of Ukrainian communities rarely produces results. Blindly transplanting foreign rules makes little sense — it is better to take the principles and adapt them to our own conditions.

For us at the Foundation, one such basic principle is simple: the larger the future investment, the more transparent and understandable must be the path that led the community to its decision to make it.

Not only for an auditor or a donor. First and foremost — for the community’s residents themselves.

Prepared by Zoia Afonina specially for RCERBS