OECD ¦ Anti-Corruption and Integrity Outlook 2026

Harnessing the integrity advantage

Corruption and fraud are no longer peripheral problems. They reduce foreign direct investment, raise the cost of doing business, distort public policies, and siphon scarce public resources away from essential services. Faced with tighter public budgets and higher demand for services, governments that cannot protect public funds or show the results of their work risk weaker public trust and poorer economic outcomes. The 2026 Anti‑Corruption and Integrity Outlook finds that, despite stronger laws and more strategies in many countries, the central challenge is implementation: governments often have rules on paper but are not translating them into practice.

The core diagnosis – the implementation gap

Across 37 OECD Member and 25 partner countries, the OECD’s Public Integrity Indicators show a consistent pattern: governments have invested in regulations and strategic frameworks but frequently fail to implement them effectively. On average, the gap between the strength of regulations and actual practice stands at nearly 20 percentage points. This gap is especially large in areas where implementation matters most – conflict of interest management, political finance oversight, and disciplinary systems for public servants. Even when countries update laws, they often fail to back them with the people, money, systems and data needed to deliver results.

What the highest-performing countries do differently

High-performing countries are moving away from rigid, rules-based compliance to risk-based, results-oriented approaches.

They take three practical steps consistently:

• Target effort where it matters most: identify high-risk sectors, processes and roles (for example procurement, licencing, border services, and officials in at-risk positions), and prioritise measures that mitigate the most damaging risks.
• Use better data and technology: deploy digital tools and analytics to detect anomalies, monitor implementation, and automate routine checks – while protecting privacy and ensuring explainability.
• Track outcomes, not just outputs: set outcome-level indicators for strategies, monitor the implementation rate of actions, evaluate what works, and use the results to reallocate scarce resources.

Bastian Schwind-Wagner _Follow

"Closing the implementation gap is the key priority: laws and strategies will only reduce corruption and protect public funds if they are backed by resources, strong oversight, and measurable outcomes. Governments should shift from box‑checking to targeted, risk‑based approaches that use data and technology to prevent fraud and corruption before damage occurs.

This requires stronger co‑ordination across agencies and levels of government, clearer accountability for results, and investment in analytic capabilities and digital tools with appropriate safeguards. Embedding evaluation, transparent reporting and professionalised oversight will make integrity systems more resilient and deliver better value for citizens and businesses."

Key policy findings across thematic areas

Strategy

More countries now have anti‑corruption strategies, and several have adopted their first national frameworks. However, frequent gaps between strategic cycles create “strategic vacuums” that undermine continuity. Well‑designed strategies tend to be evidence-based, include implementation plans and stakeholder consultation, and track the implementation rate; yet only a minority of countries monitor the implementation rate in practice. Outcome-level indicators and end-of-term evaluations remain underused.

Lobbying

Despite more countries introducing lobbying laws, this area is among the weakest in terms of regulation and implementation. Declines in public access to beneficial ownership information – particularly in some EU jurisdictions after court rulings – have weakened the ability to identify who ultimately benefits from lobbying. Where lobbying registers exist, many provide only limited, low-value disclosures (for example, they may record the lobbyist’s name but not the targeted law or the client’s beneficial owner). Supervisory bodies often lack resources or investigative powers to enforce rules.

Conflict of interest

Legal frameworks are generally in place, but implementation lags. Authorities frequently do not monitor whether officials in high-risk positions submit or verify asset and interest disclosures. Many countries would benefit from a more risk-based approach to verification, better use of digital submission systems (which increase disclosure rates) and more frequent issuance of recommendations and proportionate sanctions where breaches occur. Monitoring of post‑public‑office movement (“revolving door”) remains patchy.

Political financing

Most countries have strong laws but weak implementation: political parties often fail to submit timely, complete accounts, and oversight bodies do not always have the capacity – such as certified auditors – to verify parties’ filings. Digitalisation and globalisation of campaign funding (including online micro-donations, payment platforms and social media campaigning) are changing the risk landscape faster than many legal frameworks.

Transparency of public information

Laws on access to information and proactive disclosure are widespread and stable. However, many governments still do not adopt an “open by default” approach for public data. Important integrity-related datasets – such as lobbying disclosures, ministerial agendas, and consolidated registers linking company ownership – remain inconsistently available. Supervisory bodies rarely publish statistics on requests, inspections or sanctions.

Disciplinary systems

Most countries have formal disciplinary rules for public servants, but fairness safeguards (presumption of innocence, right to contest evidence, right to legal counsel) and consistent procedures are less common. Few countries provide mandatory training for staff conducting disciplinary investigations or use digital case-management systems that would improve transparency, statistics, and efficiency.

Judicial and prosecutorial integrity

Basic safeguards – constitutional guarantees of independence, tenure, conflict-of- interest rules, and objective grounds for dismissal – are in place in most countries. But selection and promotion of judges and prosecutors do not always rely on fully merit-based, independent processes in practice. Judicial and prosecutorial elites often have lower disclosure rates for asset/interest declarations. Whistleblowing channels for judicial misconduct exist in many countries but would benefit from more public awareness and mandatory training for staff handling reports.

Focus chapters – three pressing integrity threats

Fraud prevention

Fraud in the public sector is growing in scale and sophistication. Global estimates from private and public surveys suggest losses of around 5% of revenues for organisations in aggregate; some sectors and programmes face much higher losses. Large, cross-border fraud schemes and the industrial-scale abuse of emergency funds during the COVID-19 crisis underline the risk. Most countries have internal control and risk-management frameworks that cover fraud, but far fewer have a whole-of-government anti-fraud strategy. There is growing recognition that prevention – including by using data analytics and AI to detect patterns and anomalies – is more cost-effective than a pay-and-chase enforcement approach. Governments need better methodologies to measure fraud losses and estimate the return on investment (ROI) of prevention.

Integrity in public procurement

Public procurement is a high-risk area because of the sums involved, the complexity of processes, and the multiplicity of private sector actors and global supply chains. OECD Member countries generally have legal safeguards that require non-discrimination, exclusion of suppliers involved in corruption, and integrity standards for public buyers. However, more can be done to promote supplier integrity – including supply chain transparency, anti-corruption clauses, integrity training and certifications among bidders. Data analytics and AI are underutilised: only a minority of countries use red-flag systems, risk registers or machine learning tools to detect bid rigging, inflated prices, contract modifications, or other procurement integrity breaches.

Organised crime and corruption

Organised crime now accounts for a large share of transnational economic damage. Criminal groups increasingly use corruption to infiltrate public institutions and the legal economy and deploy fraud to appropriate funds. This dynamic calls for strategies that explicitly align anti‑organised crime and anti‑corruption efforts, strengthen cross-government and international co‑operation, protect officials and institutions in vulnerable areas (licencing, borders, planning, procurement), and build upstream resilience through risk-based vetting, asset and interest checks, internal audit certification and strong whistleblower protection. Prevention and integrated risk management are as important as law enforcement.

Priority policy actions – four practical steps

1. Close the implementation gap. Translate laws and strategies into prioritized, financed, time-bound actions. Assign clear responsibilities, monitor implementation rates routinely, and report them publicly. Establish outcome level indicators and conduct independent end-of-term evaluations to learn what works.
2. Move to risk-based, results-oriented systems. Focus scarce resources on the most damaging risks and the highest exposure points (e.g., procurement, licencing, public benefits, customs, and border services; and private sector channels used by organised criminals). Use risk registers, red‑flag indicators, and cross-entity data to detect systemic vulnerabilities.
3. Leverage data, technology and skills – safely and transparently. Invest in data quality, interoperable systems and secure sharing arrangements between agencies. Scale up analytic tools and pilots that detect fraud and procurement risks, while ensuring explainability, ethical safeguards and legal oversight of AI deployments. Build digital and data skills across oversight, audit and enforcement agencies.
4. Build institutions and capacities for prevention and co‑operation. Strengthen oversight bodies (with powers, staff and auditors), integrate anti-fraud and anti-corruption functions, certify and professionalise internal audit, and improve mechanisms for interagency and international co‑operation. Strengthen integrity safeguards in vulnerable sectors and levels of government (including local government and ports), and expand whistleblower protections and reporting channels.

A call for practical, evidence-based reform

The Outlook shows that many countries have embraced the goal of better integrity, but the single most important policy imperative is to close the implementation gap. That requires re‑balancing compliance-heavy processes towards targeted, digital-first, risk-based, and outcomes-focused approaches that deliver measurable benefits for citizens and the economy. Investing in prevention and smarter use of data and technology will produce sustainable dividends – reducing the fiscal drain of fraud and corruption, protecting public services, and strengthening trust in public institutions.

Dive deeper

• Research ¦ OECD (2026), Anti-Corruption and Integrity Outlook 2026: Harnessing the Integrity Advantage, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/16708b78-en. ¦ Link ¦ licensed under the following terms, with no changes made: CC BY 4.0