Transparency in the Time of War. The T-Index 2023

This report surveys the current state of government transparency around the world, offering a real transparency measure for 143 countries, based on a survey of both de facto (publication of information on the web) and de jure (legal commitments) transparency. It is the second full edition of the T-index, after a first 129 country survey (2022). The T-index fulfillment score (% of maximum transparency possible) measures by facts and not by perceptions the distance from where a country is and where it should be on real transparency for accountability using the Sustainable Development Goal 16 and the United Nations Convention against Corruption criteria. The webpage www.corruptionrisk.org/transparency thus offers an assessment of the extent to which each country fulfills the transparency benchmarks and allows its comparison against its continent and the world’s. The global average in total fulfillment is at 61%, with the world performing far better on commitments to transparency (77% on de jure) and worse on real transparency (54% on de facto). With 80% total fulfillment and 73% de facto, EU and North America lead in transparency, although the internal variation across this developed region is significant. With a de facto index at 36%, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) does not even meet half of its de jure commitments, although it has progressed in the last year. Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has a smaller implementation gap (32 % de facto versus 52 % de jure), but the total fulfillment score is lower compared to SSA (38% versus 47%). MENA is the poorest performer in the world.. ECA (Eastern Europe and Central Asia) is above the global average at 66%, followed by Asia-Pacific and Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) at 62%. The cases of Ukraine and Russia show what a terrible challenge war brings to transparency. Ukraine, a global transparency leader prior to the war, has had to suspend many of its transparent practices. The report discusses at length the situation of Prozorro, Ukraine’s public procurement innovative monitoring platform. In the case of Russia, an earlier legacy of transparency has been gradually shrinking due to the expansion of areas controlled by the military establishment and the need to hide financial and asset declarations of some officials targeted by sanctions. The report uses transparent sources to track the impact of war and sanctions on the oligarchies of Russia and Ukraine. The conclusion so far is that Ukrainian oligarchs have been far more hurt by the conflict than Russian ones: some of the latter have in fact profited due to the energy price rise and despite sanctions. But other documented profiteers of the war exist in industries such as energy and defense also in Western countries. Finally, taking into consideration the freedom to access, coverage and functionalities of the webpages, the report flags some best examples of online tools which could serve as models for other countries.