On 26 and 27 June 2024, almost 40 participants met for our 3rd FALCON Plenary Meeting in Strasbourg (France). Our partner BETA (Bureau d’économie théorique et appliquée) provided us with a wonderful conference venue in the University of Strasbourg’s Villa Knopf.
In the current phase of the project, an important focus lies on data acquisition and analysis tools for data extraction. In-depth discussions revolved around which data is relevant, available, and how we can access it.
Work package 2, “mapping the landscape of corruption”, which essentially represents the social science part of FALCON, has already produced several important results: Corruption cases from the corruption domains addressed by FALCON – see our four use cases – were analysed with regard to drivers, actors, modus operandi, conflicts of interest, and money flows (e. g. type of payment). This research yielded big differences between the different domains. Corruption indicators were collected from scientific literature and validated through case studies (Use Case 2 and 3) or statistical analysis (UC 1 and 4). The impact of corruption, especially its cost, was analysed through literature, media investigations, court cases, interviews, and statistical analyses. Regarding the international dimension, first results show that some corruption domains, namely “fraud in public procurement” (UC 1) and “sanction circumvention” (UC2), have strong transnational dimensions, whereas others are rather local phenomena, like border corruption (UC 3).
These results constitute several project deliverables. One of the next tasks is to write them down in a more digestible way for communication purposes. But of course, these results are also used in WP 4 to determine which data sources and indicators to use. Indicators are very heterogeneous and often challenging to implement in the analysis tools. Random examples for indicators include: frequent border crossings of individual cars, forged licence plates, public tenders annulled and re-launched subsequently, tenders where much information is missing, and ownership transfers of companies previously owned by sanctioned persons to unknown individuals.
In WP 5, which just has started in June, tools for risk assessment, investigation and decision support will be developed by the FALCON technical partners in close collaboration with the LEA partners, who will also be the end-users. One example is a tool where users can select a risk scenario and then estimate the likelihood and impact of the risk depending on different inputs.
First mockups, or visual prototypes, of the end-user dashboard, were shown, and thoughts on the functionalities of the user interface were discussed. As it stands, it will be available in 4 languages: English, German, French, and Romanian.
On the second day of the plenary, two important work packages remained to be discussed. As leader of WP 3, Anti-corruption AI framework co-design, Francisco Perez from UPV (Universitat Politècnica de València) presented a draft of the overall FALCON architecture, which evolved from bringing together the partners’ different perspectives. In the context of WP 6, the FALCON pilots took some shape: Starting from the second year of the project, first releases of the FALCON software system will be made available to end-user partners in the consortium, for thorough testing in practice and feedback to the developers.
During the plenary meeting, we took the opportunity to record video statements of some of the FALCON contributors present. They were asked to explain what FALCON is about, why it is important and what their expectations of the project are. You will see the result soon on the FALCON website and social media channels.
Policymakers show high interest in FALCON
Just before the plenary and with an overlap of one day (25 and 26 June), two of our FALCON colleagues, Wilmuth Müller (Fraunhofer IOSB) and Jacopo Costa (Basel Institute on Governance), attended the CERIS “Projects to Policy Seminar” organised by the European Research Executive Agency (REA) and the Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs (DG HOME). We were honoured to hear that European policymakers are keen on learning about the results of FALCON and using them to improve anticorruption policies – especially because our focus on corruption is unusual in EU research projects. We will be happy to contribute and are planning to engage in dialogue with policymakers, once FALCON has substantial results to share.
