Topic Guide: Conflicts of Interest

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). www.oecd.org  

The OECD guidelines, toolkits and analysis on conflict of interest management and the revolving door have been pioneering. The hub on conflict of interest should be the first port-of-call for all those seeking to quickly get to grips with the subject. The organisation has accrued expert knowledge and an impressive repository of best practice examples to support both OECD member states and non-member countries improve public sector probity.    

Corporate Europe Observatory. http://corporateeurope.org/revolvingdoorwatch    

The Corporate Europe Observatory is a research and campaign group working to expose and challenge the privileged access and influence enjoyed by corporations and their lobby groups in EU policy making. It has a useful tool to monitor the revolving door in and out of EU institutions: a regularly updated database of commissioners, MEPs and officials who have gone through the revolving door into lobby or industry jobs. Lobbyists who have taken jobs with the EU institutions are also featured.  

Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU). http://www.alter-eu.org/  

ALTER-EU is a coalition of over 200 public interest groups and trade unions concerned with the increasing influence exerted by corporate lobbyists. ALTER-EU seeks to combine Brussels-based monitoring and expertise in EU institutional affairs with the national-level knowledge and campaign muscle of its member groups to create well-researched campaign demands which attract pan-European support and which lead to political reform. One of their four central campaigns revolves around blocking the revolving door for EU officials. This campaign demands cooling off periods for commissioners and staff of three and two years respectively. ALTER-EU's reports on the revolving door in EU institutions are available here and here.  

Sunlight Foundation. http://sunlightfoundation.com/  

The Sunlight Foundation is a non-partisan, non-profit that advocates for open government globally and uses technology to make government more accountable to all. While their primary focus is on money in politics, some of their tools are also applicable to identifying conflicts of interest in public offices. For example, their app Influence Explorer allows users to explore which companies and organisations are donating funds to political campaigns. The Lobbyist Registration Tracker is a database which allows users to see lobbying registrations as they are submitted and the trends in issues and registrations over time.