ALTHOUGH Egypt improved its ranking in the Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 2010, rising from 111th place to 98th out of a total of 178 countries. It scored 3.1 on a scale of 10 (very clean) to zero (very corrupt). According to Director of the Egyptian Cabinet's affiliate Social Contract Centre (SCC) Sahar El-Tawila, one major factor behind Egypt's deteriorating ranking was the delay in issuing three important anti-corruption laws, namely a law of free access to information, the law on the conflict of interest and a civil service law which is mainly concerned with the conduct and performance of government employees. In 2010, however, some concrete measures have been taken to promote transparency and to combat corruption. The initiatives have been mainly led by the Ministry of Administrative Development. A Transparency and Integrity Committee (TIC) affiliated to the ministry is now active, and has published its third report on the state of corruption in Egypt. While the TIC is mainly composed of civil society stakeholders, 2010 has seen the birth of another equally important committee on the official level, namely the Coordinative National Committee on Corruption Combat, headed by the minister of justice, the office of the general prosecutor and senior officials from major supervising bodies. The initiative is part of the Government Services Development Programme which aims at providing citizens with efficient and timely services through improving the work environment of civil servants and separating service seekers from service providers. Within the framework of the programme, some 200 services will be available on the Egyptian government portal. The deadline for completing the websites of all Egyptian governorates is 2011. Moreover, a hotline (16117) for receiving citizens' complaints of public servants' malpractices has been launched in September. And as the year came to an end, an initiative titled "Towards a National Strategy to Combat Corruption" has been introduced as a collaborative effort between SCC experts and the Centre for Transparency, affiliated to the Ministry of Investment.
