Accountability Lab

Accountability Lab Nepal is an affiliate of the US-based The Accountability Lab. In 2014, Accountability Lab Nepal created an innovative campaign to get to the root of corruption in Nepal by honouring positive role models in the bureaucracy, called “Integrity Idol”. This national campaign gives citizens a platform to nominate and vote for honest civil servants. The campaign was a great success—with over 300 nominations of civil servants across the country, over 2.5 million viewers of film profiling the top five candidates on national television, more than 10,000 votes for the winner, and hundreds of attendees at the final award ceremony. This unique campaign has helped generate national and international debate around the importance of honesty, personal responsibility and accountability.

The organisation claims that the success of the campaign was made possible by the use of social media. Throughout 2014, Accountability Lab Nepal’s team promoted Integrity Idol across Facebook, with public service announcements, instructions on the nomination process, photos of the Integrity Idol volunteers hard at work, links to inspiring articles about accountability, and more. Then in December, the five shortlisted candidates were announced and videos and profiles of each candidate were posted on the Facebook pages. People could vote through a “like” on the respective Facebook post with photograph and biography of a particular candidate, or by texting the SMS short code promoted on the Facebook page. During that peak voting time, one post received as much as 1,444 likes, 448 comments, 312 shares, and 38,752 people reached organically. We received 3,279 votes via Facebook likes and messages.

Accountability Lab Nepal is now launching the 2015 Integrity Idol campaign. The Integrity Idol Facebook page already has 15,528 likes and in the coming days, the campaign is expected to engage more and more people.