OVERVIEW

Assistance for Afghanistan’s Anticorruption Authority (4A) is a three-year, $9.4 million project that will support the High Office of Oversight (HOO).  The project was designed in close collaboration with government counterparts and other donors active in the area of anticorruption.  The project aims to promote a more capable, accountable, and effective government in Afghanistan, while also building  an Afghan civil society that can be a more effective partner in helping combat corruption.  4A will help develop an HOO that is financially and institutionally sustainable, models best practices of transparency and accountability to Afghan citizens, and is capable of planning for and managing donor resources, including staffing and funding requirements.  Training will focus on HOO’s administrative functions, including ability to pass independent audits and to manage budgets.   Anticipated results of the project include: increased avenues for reporting corruption; increased responsiveness to complaints at the national and sub-national levels; and, higher reported satisfaction with the government’s corruption redress mechanisms. 

ACTIVITIES

• Assist in the development and implementation of a sound institutional and sustainability strategy, including implementation of recommendations contained in the HOO’s Human Resources (HR) Assessment Report
• Technical assistance to: develop the Standard Operating Procedure manual for the HOO’s HR department; revise the HOO’s Selection and Recruitment Policy; develop the HOO’s on-line asset registration capacity; conduct Vulnerability to Corruption Assessments (VCAs) in government bodies to improve select business processes and reform existing systems; and, draft the Whistleblower’s Protection Legislation
• Conduct a desk audit to reconcile the HOO’s personnel with payroll
• Technical assistance to build civil society organizations’ capacity to speak out against and seek redress for corruption
• Technical assistance to build up the capacity of parliamentarians and select parliamentary units to address corruption issues
• Technical assistance to facilitate the work of the Monitoring and Evaluation Committee (MEC)

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

• Supported the HOO’s development of a strategic plan aligned with its current mandate, which can be adapted as the HOO takes on additional responsibilities
• Completed a Human Resources Assessment that laid down the foundations for a variety of capacity building interventions across the broad spectrum of the HOO’s administrative and technical divisions
• Provided technical assistance that improved HOO’s capacity to perform in key programmatic areas, such as: complaints management, case tracking, and asset registration and verification
• Provided assistance to upgrade and significantly improve the HOO’s information technology (IT) capacities, including its online capacities
• Provided technical assistance to civil society to raise awareness of corruption challenges and ways to address these challenges