You can most probably operate this plan within your Ministry and independent of the rest of your government. This might be the best way to proceed, if for example your Ministry is doing much more than others, or if the rest of government has other priorities. It is also possible that the rest of government does not yet have a strategy or is taking its time. In this case, we suggest that you go ahead regardless. On the other hand, countries have shown they can make progress via a more coordinated effort. For example, Poland is one country that has made significant progress against corruption in the period 2005-2013 (see diagram); one of the Ministries that led these efforts was the defence ministry.

There are several angles to this linkage with national government that you should consider. First, alignment across government:

• Alignment across government: You will probably have a greater chance of success and sustainability if your efforts are aligned to a wider government effort. This is especially the case if the government has got a broader anti-corruption plan running and is pursuing progress on it across the whole of government. In this case you will need to ask your project management unit to link up with the various cross government coordination activities.
• The quality of the national anti-corruption strategy. Most national anti-corruption strategies are of rather poor quality (see Pyman et al 2017, Pyman et al 2018). There have also been recent calls from the G20 for the countries at the ‘top’ of the CPI to set up robust national anti-corruption strategies (see here)
• The presence of a full-time cross-government coordination unit. Governments are always limited in personnel, and they often look to set up anti-corruption strategies without any champion and without any coordinating or monitoring unit. If your government has such a unit, then do engage with them. If it is all being done without dedicated personnel, probably better to press ahead on your own.