IntegriTAS Threat Assessment System

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IntegriTAS is a digital system that helps you assess the threat of political corruption linked to organized crime. Drawing on data regarding democratic vulnerabilities and the presence of organized crime in a country or territory, the system increases your capacity to systematize information, monitor threats and formulate evidence-based prevention and mitigation measures.

Typical users include security sector agencies, electoral management bodies, ombudspersons and non-governmental organizations involved in anti-corruption and the fight against organized crime.

You can use IntegriTAS to tailor your own assessment process, which includes extensive consultations with national and international actors involved in anti-corruption efforts and the fight against organized crime in a country. The system offers three guides and a software platform. The IntegriTAS guides assist you in preparing and conducting the assessment process, selecting factors and indicators, and designing prevention and mitigation strategies. The IntegriTAS software platform is composed of three modules:

 

  • A virtual library with information on the factors contributing to the threat of political corruption linked to organized crime, and indicators that help measure the threat.
     
  • Analytical tools that help you map and geo-reference threats in any country, and generate trend charts and early warnings alerts.
     
  • A framework for prevention and mitigation strategies that provides best practices and lessons learned on global comparative experiences for combating these threats

 

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To obtain a copy of the IntegriTAS software, you need to register prior interest with International IDEA. A genuine and non-for-profit organization will be granted a download key upon the submission of request.

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Enter the email you stated when requesting the key and to which the confirmation email was sent.

 

 

IntegriTAS Support Documents

The IntegriTAS Process Guide 
The IntegriTAS Factors Guide 
The IntegriTAS Prevention and Mitigation Guide 
The IntegriTAS User Manual

FAQs

The IntegriTAS system focuses on the threat of nexus between organized crime and democratic politics. It does not assess the actual nexus, but lets users assess the threat.

A threat assessment analyses the likelihood of an event taking place, based on the existence of the factors that contribute to it measured through a series of indicators. IntegriTAS does not include an impact analysis – i.e. the harm that the nexus between organized crime and politics generates, which would otherwise generate a risk assessment.

You can see whether there is an increased threat when there is (a) presence of organized crime, and (b) certain democratic vulnerabilities (understood as weaknesses or gaps in protection efforts). Combined, these factors make political institutions and processes prone to political corruption linked to organized crime.

IntegriTAS was built to help users on three tasks:
 
  • (a) Conduct a systematic analysis of the threat of nexus between organized crime and politics. This is why the system gives your suggestions to identify the various factors that can contribute to increase the threat;
  • (b) Create a collaborative platform for the assessment process. This is why the assessment process is based on a series of workshops and joint activities between multiple organizations with a mandate to fight corruption and organized crime; and
  • (c) Promote policy reform to prevent and mitigate the threats. This is why the system, besides the analytical tools provided by the software, also includes a menu of good practices and lessons learnt.
Depending on your institution’s mandate and the timing of the assessment, the system can help you, for example, to:
  • Prioritize resources for electoral observation;
  • Deploy security personnel to critical areas; • Improve inter-agency coordination; and
  • Present legislative initiatives to curb illicit political finance.
The IntegriTAS system helps you produce reports using the information and the visual displays from the software. You can generate these reports as often as you decide and can be either confidential or public. The reports can help you, for example:
  • In the short term, alert the relevant authorities about the threats identified, as well as proposed priority actions in areas that are particularly vulnerable.
  • In the medium and long term, support reform processes based on empirical data. These processes seek to improve public policies and legislation, as well as to mobilize collective action to prevent and mitigate the nexus between organized crime and politics.
To conduct the assessment, International IDEA suggests that you conduct the following (roughly in this order):
  • Context overview exercise;
  • Customization;
  • Operational design;
  • Data collection;
  • Data analysis;
  • Model revision;
  • Periodic reports;
  • Validation dialogues;
  • Post-implementation analysis;
  • Final report;
  • Dissemination and advocacy strategy; and
  • Final feedback.
The tool is available free to non-profit organizations. The target institutions include security sector agencies, oversight actors, electoral management bodies, ombudspersons and non-governmental organizations involved in anti-corruption and the fight against organized crime.
Anybody can access and use the system. A local institution is expected to lead the assessment process. Typical users include electoral management bodies, ombudspersons, anti-corruption agencies, law enforcement agencies, civil society organizations or academic institutions.

Personnel should ideally have experience both from a technical perspective (i.e. data collection and analysis), as well as from a thematic perspective (i.e. democratic vulnerabilities and organized crime activities). They should furthermore have relevant knowledge of the local situation.

Staff members should ideally be part of your organization and not one-time consultants. This helps you maintain the system at a later stage and internalize the process.

Collecting data for IntegriTAS usually requires researchers to:
  • Retrieve existing data from existing sources that are publicly available;
  • Retrieve existing data from existing sources that are not publicly available (this can require informal petitions or official request, and even freedom of information acts); and/or
  • Generating new information through, for example, public or expert surveys.
Afterwards, you must enter the data into the software, disaggregated according to the geographical scope assigned to the analysis.
After the data has been collected, you can:
  • Generate situation analysis and threat alerts;
  • Produce recommendations on possible prevention and mitigation actions;
  • Share threat alerts and maps internally within your organization and externally with the public or targeted partners; and
  • Monitor the actions undertaken according to the recommendations produced.
Yes. Revising the model (e.g. the selection of factors, the indicators and the data sources) on a periodic basis ensures that the analysis focuses on the most prominent and emerging threats, and can adapt to data gaps and methodological challenges.
The team typically includes:
  • (a) A hub manager, who coordinates information exchange, directs analysis on the factors and indicators, guides in the preparation of reports, and shares alerts;
  • (b) A data analyst, who coordinates internal and external data collection and ensures data quality, analyses data to generate threat maps and trend charts, generates alerts and drafts reports; and
  • (c) Data entry clerks, who compile and consolidate data and make data entries, and provide analytical outputs for specific regions, factors and periods.
Your organization is the sole owner of the results, including the reports. Your organization should nonetheless acknowledge International IDEA’s IntegriTAS system for its role in conducting the assessment, as part of the system’s creative commons license.
International IDEA built the IntegriTAS system so that user institutions can implement it independently. For particular projects, International IDEA can eventually support a partner organization in the following:
  • Conducting technical trainings on the software usage and some thematic components of the system;
  • Providing some remote support to the team on the system’s implementation;
  • Monitoring and evaluating the assessment process (in situ and remotely) to gather insights to fine tune the assessment process.

Please follow this link: http://www.idea.int/IntegriTAS

You will need to register your interest online, and your organization will later receive details about how to download the material.

You need OS Windows XP or 7 (32 and 64 bit) and up to 520MB on your hard disc (Zip = 478MB).
No. Once the system is downloaded, it is on your server. International IDEA does not have any kind of access to the information you enter in the software nor any other of your computer information.

No, the system does not include the maps you will be using. You need to obtain shape maps (.shp with accompanying .dbf files) of the geographical regions of interest. Shape maps are widely used by Global Information System (GIS) applications and often consist of a national map and several layers of sub-national administrative divisions.

Maps can be found online, often available for free, or purchased from specialized companies at affordable prices.

The IntegriTAS system encourages you to mainstream gender throughout the assessment process. You should use a gender-sensitive lens to include specific considerations that affect women and men in various aspects of the systems, particularly in:
  • Process design: When deciding how the assessment process will look like, your institution should aim for a balanced involvement of women and men in its various phases;
  • Data collection phases: when gathering information, you should strive to disaggregate it by gender, allowing analysis on how each factor may affect women and men differently;
  • Selections of factors and indicators: when customizing the factors section, you should seek to include, when relevant, categories that show how women and men specifically relate to the threats analyzed, either at the factor or indicator level; and
  • Selection and implementation of prevention and mitigation strategies: when designing actions and responses against the threats identified, you should target them such that they benefit women and men in a balanced way.
You should consider how the potential planning and implementation of the assessment exercise may exacerbate tensions and conflict, and should consider strategies to mitigate those threats, and indeed to maximize the peace-building effects of your intervention. An adequate customization of the system helps you capture these sensitive conditions. For example, polarizing events—such as upcoming elections—may require adapting the assessment process to decrease potential risks for the team and the organizations providing data.

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Disclaimer: Maps presented do not imply on the part of the Institute any judgement on the legal status of any territory or the endorsement of such boundaries, nor does the placement or size of any country or territory reflect the political view of International IDEA. Maps are used in order to add visual clarity to data.