Established in 2005, Global Integrity began as an internationally-focused program of the Center for Public Integrity. With Nathaniel Heller our first Executive Director, we quickly established a reputation for producing some of the richest and most reliable data about the nature and quality of governance systems around the world.
Our approach to assessing governance was novel in two ways. First, we sought to measure not only whether laws were in place, but also the extent to which they were actually implemented. Second, we relied on local researchers, whose expertise came from their lived experience and local knowledge of their contexts.
We gained a reputation for innovation in other ways too, exploring the value and limits of technological solutions to governance challenges, designing the first peer learning mechanism for the Open Government Partnership back in 2011, and establishing – along with Development Gateway – one of the first thematically-focused co-working spaces, the Open Gov Hub, in 2012.
Alan Hudson replaced Nathaniel as Executive Director in 2015, leading the development of a strategy which has focused our efforts on exploring the value and limits of locally-led, learning-centered and adaptive approaches to addressing complex governance challenges.