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Programme

Diverse Expertise and Forward-Thinking Topics: Transparency School 2025 will focus on the key topics at the forefront of anti-corruption efforts. The curriculum will cover political integrity, strategies against money laundering and organized crime, enriched with modern insights into AI, data-driven decisions, and behavioral science. The Transparency School curriculum is presented through a variety of learning modules such as lectures, seminars, trainings, discussions, field trips, film screenings and social events. Our lecturers are leading professionals and experts from the public, private, NGO, and academic sectors.

The School features three teaching modules that cover the public sector, the private sector and civic empowerment tools. Each module deals both with theory and practice and includes such topics as:

  • Public sector (political integrity, public finance transparency, AI & decision-making, behavioural & cultural insights in policymaking);
  • Private sector (anti-money laundering, business integrity, leadership, ethical corporate culture);
  • Civil society & academia (anti-corruption education, political integrity, data-driven advocacy, behavioral tools for change).

We are currently working on the programme for Transparency School 2025. Thus, we encourage you to revisit this page for the most up-to-date information.

The journey through Transparency School 2025

Transparency School is a community that spans sixteen years, six continents and two thousand inspiring life paths of people passionate about change. The School constantly seeks to reinvent itself and offer its attendants the latest take on all things integrity and anti-corruption. Its lecturers, topics and formats are all meant to help the Transparency Schoolers leave Vilnius with a better understanding of how they can apply the newly acquired knowledge to their own particular context. 

Day 1
This is the day of welcomes and introductions to the School’s community and its theory of change. The activities are meant to offer the taste of tempo and velocity you will be able to enjoy throughout the entire week in Vilnius. From the get-go, the participants will be invited to share their own stories and visions of transparency, accountability and corruption prevention – be it through an interactive hackathon-like assembly or by joining senior colleagues on stage during lectures and seminars.  

Day 2
This day is all about calibrating and bringing all talks about transparency and anti-corruption down to earth. Its key questions are how to create change in our own institutions, what do we mean by change and how to ensure its sustainability? The Schoolers will be invited to dive deeper into the world of behavioral and cultural insights and master new approaches that could help stir discussions and changes in their own organisations. There will be theater play, discussions and, hopefully, lots of laughter.

Day 3
This day is meant to offer yet another mix, with its first part dedicated to the interplay between accountability, engagement and trust. The Schoolers will be invited to hone your creator skills in open discussions with the architects of action civics, participatory budgets and citizen assemblies. The second part of the day will feature deep dives into the clockwork of prevention and compliance, guided by seasoned professionals, deconstructing various scenarios and offering you an actionable blueprint to take home.

Day 4
This day addresses the positive and negative impact that the newest technological developments have had and may have on anti-corruption and transparency. You will learn about data-driven approaches that help disentangle criminal networks, on the one hand, and a new modus operandi machine-learning offers for law enforcement and monitoring agencies. From crypto tracing to AI-enabled red flag detection, we’ll also explore how technology is reshaping approaches to uncovering and addressing money laundering.

Day 5
The last day of the School is there to help you put things in perspective. This is a day of intensive executive seminars aimed to hone your strategic thinking, communication, advocacy and leadership skills. A kaleidoscope of scenarios to discuss and dilemmas to solve will put your newly acquired knowledge to test and, hopefully, will help you develop your very own anti-corruption toolkit to be used wisely and sustainably for years to come. 

Please take a look at the preliminary programme of the School below. As we constantly update the information, we strongly encourage you to revisit this page for the most up-to-date details.

In addition, please find more information on the previous editions of the Transparency School here: 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021| 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 and the course material below.

READING MATERIAL

Preparatory reading material selected by the lecturers will be shared with the successful candidates of the Transparency School 2025.

In the meantime, please find below a list of core reading material.

1. United Nations Convention against Corruption
The Convention introduces a comprehensive set of standards, measures and rules that all countries can apply in order to strengthen their legal and regulatory regimes to fight corruption. It calls for preventative measures and the criminalization of the most prevalent forms of corruption in both public and private sectors, and requires Members States to return assets obtained through corruption to the country from which they were stolen.

You are further encouraged to take the initiative and familiarize yourself with the history and implementation of the Convention around the world: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/treaties/CAC/

2. The Anti-Corruption Plain Language Guide by Transparency International
The Anti-Corruption Plain Language Guide, developed by Transparency International, offers a set of standardised, easy-to-understand definitions, providing readers with concrete examples in practice of how TI approaches these issues. It aims to provide clarity on the terms that the anti-corruption movement uses most in its daily work as well as those associated with new and emerging issues. Relevant links are also provided for further backrgound information and research.

3. Corruption Perception Index
The Corruption Perceptions Index ranks countries and territories based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be. A country or territory’s score indicates the perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0 – 100, where 0 means that a country is perceived as highly corrupt and 100 means it is perceived as very clean. A country’s rank indicates its position relative to the other countries and territories included in the index. This year’s index includes 177 countries and territories.

4. The Global Corruption Barometer
The Transparency International Global Corruption Barometer is the largest cross-country survey collecting the views on and experiences of corruption of the general public. Since its debut in 2003, the Global Corruption Barometer has surveyed the experiences of everyday people confronting corruption around the world. The Barometer explores the general public’s views about corruption levels in their country as well as their government’s efforts to fight corruption.

5. Bribe Payers’ Index
The Bribe Payers Index is a unique tool capturing the supply side of international bribery, specifically focusing on bribes paid by the private sector. It asks senior business executives in a number of countries around the world for their perceptions of the likelihood of companies, from countries they have business dealings with, to engage in bribery when doing business in the executive’s country.

Data for the Index is drawn from the Bribe Payers Survey – a country’s score is an average of the scores given by all the respondents who rated rated the country, resting on a 0-10 scale. A score of 0 corresponds with the perception that companies of that particular country always pay bribes when doing business abroad; a score of 10 indicates a perception that they never pay bribes in their ventures abroad.

6. Various global corruption reports: from education and access to information to private sector and political corruption
The Global Corruption Report (GCR) is one of Transparency International’s flagship publications, bringing the expertise of the anti-corruption movement to bear on a specific corruption issue. The report highlights cutting edge qualitative and quantitative research, gathers knowledge on lessons learned and showcases innovative tools. In doing so, it enhances our understanding of the dynamics of corruption and seeks to provide practical and proven solutions to improve governance and accountability.

7. OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions: The OECD Anti-Bribery Convention establishes legally binding standards to criminalise bribery of foreign public officials in international business transactions and provides for a host of related measures that make this effective. It is the first and only international anti-corruption instrument focused on the ‘supply side’ of the bribery transaction. The 34 OECD member countries and six non-member countries – Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Colombia, Russia, and South Africa – have adopted this Convention.

8. UN Global Compact’s ten principles
The UN Global Compact asks companies to embrace, support and enact, within their sphere of influence, a set of core values in the areas of human rights, labour standards, the environment and anti-corruption. Its ten principles in these areas enjoy universal consensus and are derived from major international treaties and agreements.

The 10th Principle states that businesses should work against corruption in all its forms, including extortion and bribery. You are encouraged to read further about it at
http://www.unglobalcompact.org/AboutTheGC/TheTenPrinciples/anti-corruption.html

9. Civil Law Convention on Corruption
The Civil Law Convention on Corruption, adopted by the Council of Europe on 4 November 1999, requires Member States to take measures at national level to provide for effective remedies for persons who have suffered damage as a result of acts of corruption, to enable them to defend their rights and interests, including the possibility of obtaining compensation for damage. The Convention contains provisions for international co-operation and monitoring action to ensure the aims above are met.

You are strongly encouraged to read the explanatory report to the Convention at http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/en/Reports/Html/174.htm

10. Criminal Law Convention on Corruption
The Criminal Law Convention on Corruption, adopted by the Council of Europe on 27 January 1999, requires Member States to take measures at the national level to criminalize and punish the conduct of bribery, trading in influence, money laundering (of proceeds from corruption offences) and all related account offences. Due to the nature of the Convention, it contains further provisions for international co-operation and compliance to ensure effective enforcement across borders. It is notable that the Convention contains provisions for holding legal persons accountable in certain cases for the criminal offences listed above committed by natural persons occupying leading positions in those legal entities.

The Convention also requires Member States to enact provisions for the protection of witnesses to these acts and collaborators of justice (known colloquially as “whistleblowers”).

You are strongly encouraged to read the explanatory report to the Convention at http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/en/Reports/Html/191.htm

We also strongly recommend you to visit:

http://transparency.org/
http://corruptionresearchnetwork.org/
http://www.u4.no/