This project aims to better understand some of the interoperability challenges for improved multi-agency collaboration and decision-making. While a growing body of evidence suggests we need to develop more problem-driven, politically feasible strategies and operations on organised crime and corruption, there are often differences of opinion in multi-agency teams on what this means and what is needed. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with policymakers and practitioners from a range of agencies, we will design sensemaking workshops to build better understanding of bottlenecks for communications and implications of missing or ambiguous information, and proposing potential solutions to these problems. While generating useful insights in its own right, workshops will also inform the potential development of a Cooperative AI system to improve decision-making for strategies and interventions in the future.

This research project will test an innovative new approach - the Corruption Functionality Framework - to developing more effective and politically feasible anti-corruption strategies and approaches in a way that brings together serious organised crime and corruption in specific sectors and/or contexts. The team will work with policymakers to test the approach in multi-agency settings, focusing on specific problems in specific locations. The approach combines facilitated workshops with country and sector experts followed by semi-structured interviews to assess whether participants found the CFF useful for triggering new thinking and potential strategic and/or operational approaches. The research will also help to develop more granular understanding of how functionality works in specific contexts that could, in future research, be developed into a series of comparative case studies. Insights from the research will also be used to adapt the CFF to help ensure it is as useful as possible. 

Grand corruption is a transnational problem requiring cooperation among anti-corruption actors. Law enforcement actors find that cooperation is difficult to achieve. This has been attributed to; the political sensitivity of investigations, lack of trust among agencies, difficulties in sharing intelligence securely, weaknesses and discrepancies in capacity, and organisational incentive structures that favour quick and easy cases. However, investigative journalists, increasingly cooperate across borders to investigate, and expose corruption. This research explores these two under-researched sets of anti-corruption actors, specifically the challenges to cooperation and possible solutions among law enforcement agencies; among investigative journalists; and between the two groups of actors.