Is It Enough for an Official Not to Steal? Integrity Is Necessary, but It Is Not Proof of Achievement

Retired Police Brigadier

Omar Mohamed Osman

Whenever people criticise a minister or public official, someone invariably comes to his defence by saying: “He is an honest man. He has not stolen anything and has never been involved in a corruption case. He is a clean man.” No one can disagree about the importance of integrity; it is a necessary condition for holding public office. The problem begins, however, when we treat not stealing as proof of competence, and the absence of corruption as evidence of success.

A minister or public official is not appointed merely to pass a test of honesty. He is appointed to manage a particular sector and deliver results that people can see and feel. We therefore should not ask only: Did he steal? We must also ask: What did he find when he took office? What did he promise, and how much of what he promised was actually delivered? Did the sector improve under his leadership, and did citizens notice a difference? Did he make decisions when they were needed, or did he postpone problems? And how did he use the financial and human resources available to him?

More importantly: what did he leave behind? Did he leave an institution stronger and better equipped to continue, or did he leave it as he found it — or worse?

These are not theoretical questions. They lie at the heart of what is known as Performance Accountability: holding an official accountable for the results he has achieved, just as he is held accountable for the integrity of his conduct. This is also the basis of Results-Based Management, which measures a ministry’s performance not by the number of meetings it holds or statements it issues, but by the outputs and impact those activities produce on the ground.

The concept of Public Value adds a deeper question: what has the official actually added for citizens and the state? Public office is not intended merely to safeguard resources, but to transform those resources into services and benefits that people can experience.

This is why we need to distinguish between Integrity and Effectiveness. The first answers: Did he safeguard the trust placed in him? The second asks: Did he achieve the purpose for which he was appointed? Then comes Efficiency. An official may be honest and may accomplish some tasks, yet still waste resources in the process. What matters is the relationship between what was spent and what was achieved. This is what is known as achieving Value for Money in the use of public funds.

Perhaps the greatest flaw in how we evaluate public officials is that many take office without a publicly announced plan or clearly defined objectives. A minister or official may spend years in his ministry and then leave, without anyone being able to say: What exactly was he expected to achieve in the first place?

When there is no Strategic Plan, and no SMART Goals — that is, goals that are specific, measurable, realistic and time-bound — there are no Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) against which performance can be assessed, no Baseline against which improvement can be measured, and no Targets for which the official can be held accountable. Without a benchmark, every assessment becomes nothing more than an impression.

And because assessing performance requires figures that we do not have, we resort to what is available: the person’s record, reputation and honesty. Integrity can be judged through reputation, but achievement cannot be proved or disproved without a standard to measure it against. Thus, vague statements become a refuge for everyone. The official tells us about “efforts made” and “major challenges” rather than results, while his defenders tell us about his clean record rather than his performance.

The way forward is to link an appointment to a Performance Contract that specifies objectives, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and a defined timeframe, together with a Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) system that reviews progress regularly and makes the findings public. Then the official knows what he will be held accountable for, and citizens know what criteria to use to assess him. The question, “Did he deliver?” will then have a meaningful answer.

If we look at some of the leaders whose names have remained in history, from the Rightly Guided Caliphs, may Allah be pleased with them, to Mahathir Mohamad, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Angela Merkel, we find that people speak about what they accomplished, what they changed and the impact they left behind. No one remembers them simply because they refrained from putting their hands into public funds.

Integrity is therefore the foundation of trust in a public official, but it is not a measure of his success. Not stealing public money is the minimum expected of anyone who holds public office; it is not an achievement for which he should be given credit.

If we have reached the point where we hold officials accountable for corruption, we should not exempt them from accountability for failure and poor performance. The absence of unlawful conduct does not mean that achievement exists, and a clean record does not necessarily mean good management.

The state does not merely need officials who do not steal. It needs people who know what they want to achieve, make decisions at the right time, use resources wisely, confront crises rather than run away from them, and hand over their institutions to their successors in better condition than when they received them.

Someone without a plan cannot be held accountable for results. And if we do not hold people accountable for results, we will end up doing nothing more than praising them for their integrity.

In logical terms, integrity is a Necessary Condition for a public official, but it is not a Sufficient Condition for judging that official to be successful.

This article should not be understood as diminishing the importance of integrity. Integrity is fundamental and indispensable. Rather, it clarifies a common conceptual confusion that leads us to count honesty as an achievement and judge an official by something that should be inherent in anyone holding public office, rather than by what he has actually delivered.

In short: integrity protects an official from betraying the trust placed in him; achievement is what justifies his presence in office.

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