This session will explore good practices, lessons learned, and innovative approaches to strengthening local government integrity and accountability through preventative ethics training frameworks.

For local governments around the world, ethics training is a critical element of anti-corruption strategies. Effective ethics training can help build a system-wide culture of integrity as a cornerstone of good governance. But there are many different ways that local governments design and apply ethics training frameworks. Compliance-based training, which focuses on rules and consequences, is the most common. Increasingly, however, values-focused and integrity-based approaches are recognized as being more effective in fostering long-term behavioral change. What do we know about these different approaches and their relationship to public sector integrity outcomes? What factors contribute to long-term ethical decision-making and stronger accountability? What practical and logistical challenges do local governments face when designing locally relevant ethics training as part of a broader strategy to enhance integrity and combat corruption?

Drawing on experiences from localities and on scholarly research, this session will provide participants with concrete peer examples, evidence-based information, and a range of options and questions to consider for their own contexts.