"Closing the Loop through Integrity Building and Education"

Integrity is an inherent ingredient for promoting good governance and building public trust to state institutions. Basic public services are often compromised with lack of accountability, incompetence and unethical behavior which are the signs of the absence of integrity, which stimulates corruption to flourish. Thus, with an aim to improving the quality of people's lives by addressing the challenges and opportunities for building integrity from bottom up, Center for Organization Development from Management Learning Group of Nepal Administrative Staff College (NASC) and Integrity Action, London, UK collaboratively designed and conducted a two day workshop “Closing the Loop through Integrity Building and Education” on the 2nd and 3rd of June, 2014.

The objectives of the workshop were to:
• Develop a shared understanding of concepts and strategies on integrity building,
• Analyze the existing efforts of integrity building that close the loop on specific problems related to public service delivery,
• Explore and analyze the collaborative approach between or among government agencies, civil society, training and educational institutions, and information technology providers to achieve shared objectives to increase effectiveness and efficiency of public service delivery through integrity building, and
• Develop an outline strategy for closing the loop to raise the integrity standard.

The workshop included a mix of 28 participants from government agencies, education and training institutions, civil society organizations and private companies. The workshop commenced with the opening remarks of the Executive Director of NASC Mr. Punya Prasad Neupane, Deputy Executive Director of NASC Dr. Tarak Bahadur K.C. and CEO of Integrity Action, UK Mr. Fredrik Galtung. Mr. Galtung appreciated the initiative of NASC for conducting the two day workshop and also commended the talented people he has had the opportunity to work with in Nepal. The workshop was managed by a team of Dr. Tarak Bahadur KC, Mr. Fredrik Galtung, Mr. Tulasi Sharan Sigdel, Ms. Achala Dahal, and Ms. Shital Moktan.