Countering Transnational Corruption through Innovation and Collaboration
USAID’s 12th Grand Challenge is mobilizing diverse stakeholders to build coalitions, support collective problem-solving, and identify innovative solutions to counter transnational corruption
Transnational corruption crosses borders, involves global networks, and employs sophisticated schemes to siphon off the wealth of a country from its people.
As USAID Administrator Samantha Power explained in laying out her vision for USAID in November 2021, corruption is development in reverse. Corruption is a significant and evolving challenge, and success in fighting it requires a global, clever, and nimble response.
In 2022, USAID awarded Tetra Tech a task order to support the Countering Transnational Corruption Grand Challenge for Development (CTC Grand Challenge). As the vanguard of USAID’s suite of anti-corruption programs in thePresidential Initiative for Democratic Renewal, the five-year CTC Grand Challenge leverages innovation and collaboration to prevent corrupt individuals from siphoning off critical resources that are meant to be used for the public good.
The CTC Grand Challenge supports local, regional, and global innovations to detect and disrupt illicit finance and trafficking of commodities; strengthen transparency and accountability in global supply chains; promote standards, practices, and norms that enhance integrity in the public and private sectors; and address other significant dynamics of transnational corruption.
Working alongside USAID and our major subcontractor, Resonance, an industry leader in open innovation, MSI adaptively manages the CTC Grand Challenge governance structure and oversees the technical and co-creative design, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and learning of Grand Challenge activities. The CTC Grand Challenge has three ongoing open innovation activities, including the Powering a Just Energy Transition Green Minerals Challenge, the Data for Integrity Hackathon Series, and the Doing Business with Integrity Call for Innovations. The team is also facilitating the co-design process with interested stakeholders to develop open innovation activities to counter transnational corruption in climate finance and global health supply chains.
The CTC Grand Challenge is a task order under the Active Communities – Effective States IDIQ contract held by Tetra Tech and builds upon MSI’s almost 30-year history of supporting large and complex anti-corruption programmingworldwide.