| Procurement Changes |
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Effecting Procurement Changes
Defence ministries usually have plenty of scope for major improvements to their procurement machinery.  The vulnerabilities in the procurement process are documented elsewhere on this site (see the paper on The defence procurement process and its vulnerabilities and the procurement section of these webpages).
The most effective measures will depend always on the country and its circumstances. The starting point is usually through leadership from the Minister/ Head of the Defence Ministry/ Head of Defence Procurement that corruption does occur in defence procurement, and that it is the intention of this administration to talk about this subject openly and address the problem thoroughly. This is then accompanied by a series of workshops involving officials and senior officers on the nature of the problem in their administration and approaches to tackle it. The Transparency International team have facilitated such workshops: we can attest to the immense value that they have in making the subject ‘discussable’. The involvement of staff needs to be accompanied by an analysis and diagnosis of the problem. Transparency International has assisted in some of this type of diagnosis (for instance in Colombia). Once officials and officers are engaged, the nature of the issue in this country will become clearer. A plan needs then to be developed on what needs to be done. Usually, this plan is not about legislation – in most countries there is by now adequate anti-corruption legislation. The issues are more around practice and procedure inside the Ministry and the Services Specific measures that have been taken across countries include the following, in no particular order of importance:
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