VIENNA, September 10. /Dunyo IA/. The Austrian magazine SOCIETY recently published an article highlighting the significant reforms in Uzbekistan’s anti-corruption efforts, reports Dunyo IA correspondent.

The article notes that in January 2017, the President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed the Anti-Corruption Law, which became a breakthrough step. The fight against corruption in Uzbekistan was elevated to the rank of state policy. The Head of state in each of his addresses and messages makes focus on the need to bring the perpetrators to legal responsibility, to strengthen the system of preventive measures, and the importance of combating corruption by the whole society.

"International experts note that Uzbekistan is the only country in the region that has become a leader in the rate of improvement of the corruption perception indicator in recent years", the publication reports.

It is noted that today, the systematic fight against corruption carried out in Uzbekistan, the implementation and increase in the effectiveness of measures to prevent corruption in all areas, ensuring cooperation between the government and society, ensuring the principle of the inevitability of responsibility for committing corruption offenses determine the basic principles of the government in combating corruption. For the first time in 2023, the constitutional foundations of anti-corruption activities were enshrined; election by the Senate of the head of the republican anti-corruption body. More than 80 regulatory legal acts have been adopted.

The article also underscores the role of digital technologies as crucial tools in fighting corruption. The gradual and consistent digitalization of all administrative processes allows us to move to a qualitatively new level in public governance, which builds in effective cooperation with civil society. Information and communication technologies are being widely introduced in all areas to reduce a human factor. In particular, within the framework of the Digital Uzbekistan 2030 Strategy, 370 projects related to the digitalization of the activities of government and economic administration have been implemented. The E-Anticorruption project has been launched to prevent corruption risks in government agencies and organizations.

"The introduction of the Openness Index in Uzbekistan has become one of the significant steps towards taking the transparency in government agencies and organizations to a qualitatively new level, further enhancing a culture of accountability to society. Due to a complete digitization of the Index assessment system, the wider public have got the opportunity to online monitor the effectiveness and efficiency of the work carried out through index.anticorruption.uz platform", the article says.

SOCIETY concludes that the implementation of the above-mentioned reforms is carried out through the adoption of systemic measures in the cooperation of government bodies, representatives of the business sector and civil society institutions.