Ambient accountability - fighting corruption where and when it happens

Ambient accountability provides a new lens to understand an important segment of corruption risks and develop new ideas for tackling them.  This paper proposes the concept of  ambient accountability as a promising addition to the research programme, policy debate and practical toolbox of accountability mechanisms.

As a first working definition ambient accountability can be broadly described as all efforts that seek to shape, use and engage systematically with the built environment and public places and the ways people experience and interact in them, in order to further transparency, accountability and integrity of public authorities and services.

The two key features shared by all forms of ambient accountability are:

• a focus on the overlooked spatial dimension of accountability, on the actual place and the actual interface where citizens and officeholders/public service providers interact, where the outcomes of specific policies manifest themselves and where the responsible institutions reside alas where accountability is to be expected, practices and felt: the city square, the hospital, the police station, the construction site, in front of the ministry of x)
• a focus on targeted information interventions that go beyond general exhortations of anticorruption messages and provide or facilitate access to the very types of information that empower citizens in a specific context and location