MAY 2021

BULLSEYE
A CASE STUDY FROM
BEIRUT ON DRIVING
GOVERNANCE REFORM
IN TIMES OF
UNCERTAINTY

Beirut Office- Headquarters Amman Office Belfast Office

1146, Bazerkane Street, Khalaf Wshtai Building, Registered Office
Beirut Central District, Beirut, 93 Al-Madina Al-Monawara Street, t +44 (0) 2892677710
Lebanon. Al Rawabi,
t +961 81 353525 Amman,
e info@sirenassociates.com Jordan.
 OUTLINE
1. About Siren Associates
2. Revolution in the air: A change from within
3. Central Inspection: An oversight cornerstone
4. The GOAL project: Back to the future
5. IMPACT: The project’s nerve center
6. The back-kitchen: Ingredients of success
7. Conclusion: A most virtuous cycle

02
THIS IS
OUR STORY
A story of young Lebanese researchers, developers, engineers, lawyers, professors and
communicators who invested their time, knowledge and passion to enable change in
the midst of the storm that has been hitting their country for the past year and a half.

This story is about our hopes and dreams, our challenges and fears towards the country
we have always longed for and through a digital transition that emerged as the last
resort.

In a time of crisis, we refused to concede to despair and turned the challenge into an
opportunity by designing solutions, implementing them and raising awareness about
their role in mitigating the Lebanese people's suffering.

We leveraged our skills to face the darkness of a long, deeply rooted political system,
which refused change and found comfort in the status quo. We spoke the language of
the public administration, but also the language of the people, negotiating by day and
implementing by night, a non-stop, consistent routine that gave birth to the first e-
governance tool in Lebanon.

This story is about every citizen who is dreaming of change and ready to make it
happen. Despair is not an option. Change will come and justice will prevail.

The IMPACT Team

Beirut, 5 June 2021

02
About Siren
Associates

Siren Associates is a UK registered not-for- Based out of Beirut, we see the wealth of
profit company with headquarters in technology expertise in the country not just as
Lebanon, and offices in Jordan and Northern an economic competitive advantage, but as a
Ireland. We specialize in public sector reform, public good that can be engaged in
empowering organisations to become more meaningful missions and contribute to
responsive to the needs of communities. We improved prosperity in Lebanon, the Middle
support clients through the process of East, and around the world.
strategic change, combining organisational
development expertise with a client-centered Since 2019, we have been involved in a
approach. comprehensive programme working toward
enhancing the Lebanese Government’s
With the support of the technical team at our accountability and governance, while
sister company, Siren Analytics, we have fostering opportunities for increased and
recently merged our deep understanding of more constructive engagement between the
political economy with the disruptive power public administration, civil society and
of technology, taking a calculated risk to put Lebanese citizens, with the ultimate aim of
today’s leading technologies into the hands of renewing the social contract.
tomorrow’s leaders.
This is the story of our successes,
shortcomings, and goals for the future.

03
REVOLUTION IN
THE AIR: A CHANGE
FROM WITHIN
October 2019. Thousands of Lebanese citizens, frustrated
with a political system that consistently denied them their
most basic rights, rallied in central Beirut behind the call:
“Ash-shab yurid isqat an-nizam” [the people want the
downfall of the regime]. The call reverberated in Siren
Associates’ downtown headquarters, located adjacent to the
Lebanese Parliament and just a few blocks away from the
Prime Minister’s Grand Serail.

Inside, the Siren team had just received news of a funding

approval from the British Embassy in Beirut for its
Governance, Oversight and Accountability in Lebanon (GOAL)
proposal, after months of research leading to one main
conclusion: strong and empowered oversight bodies are a
stepping stone to building a corruption-free Lebanon.

The theory of change behind the proposal took a holistic

approach toward institutional reform, involving control
agencies, legislative oversight and civil society. It worked on
the assumption that change cannot only be prescribed by
the street, but also has to come from within the state.

Despite increased pressure by civil society and the

international community to enhance local governance since
2015, and the advent of the “You Stink!” movement after the
government’s failure to find solutions to a massive waste
crisis, Lebanon still ranked 143 among 175 countries on the
corruption scale, an all-time post-war high score.

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Misconduct, inefficiency and unproductivity were, and still
are, a plague within the public sector, crippling policy
making around energy, urban planning, the environment and
health, to name but a few.

On the eve of the 2018 parliamentary elections, three donor

conferences were organised around infrastructure
development, security and refugee matters. The pledged
donations and loans of the CEDRE conference alone reached
$11 billion, but the biggest obstacles to receiving this aid were
corruption and Lebanon’s weak institutional framework.

Lebanese authorities committed to implement fiscal,

structural and sectoral reforms in order to receive the funds
from donor countries and international financial institutions.
They stressed that they were “fighting corruption,
strengthening governance and accountability, including
public finance management and modernising procurement
rules.”

These commitments were, however, not implemented and

Lebanon remained on a downward trajectory. Events took a
dramatic turn in October 2019: the onset of Lebanon’s
ongoing and deep financial and currency collapse, and the
month when popular protests erupted, bringing the country
to a standstill.

This acute crisis was aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic

from March 2020, and by the catastrophic blast at the Beirut
Port in August that year, which dealt a coup de grace to an
already struggling nation.

The international community reiterated its readiness to

support Lebanon, provided that accountability measures
were taken and that the country’s weakened and paralysed
oversight bodies were properly empowered.

05
Central Inspection: an
oversight cornerstone
Lebanon’s oversight and control system is a complex
network that spans the legislative, executive and judicial
branches. It aims at ensuring compliance with laws and
regulations, and optimising the performance of the public
administration. The executive oversight and control
mechanisms revolve around four main bodies: the Court of
Audit, Central Inspection, Civil Service Board, and Higher
Disciplinary Council – all attached to the Presidency of the
Council of Ministers.

The Court of Audit was created in 1951, eight years after the
country gained its independence. Its establishment was
followed by that of Central Inspection and the Civil Service
Board in 1959, as part of President Fouad Chehab’s
administrative reform effort. Chehab had in view an
empowered oversight and control apparatus within the
Lebanese public administration, and his efforts to this end
marked a turning point in the history of Lebanon’s
accountability system. The Higher Disciplinary Council was
later established in 1965 as the main disciplinary
instrument entrusted with ensuring proper conduct by civil
servants.

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Central Inspection was attributed the mission of
monitoring and controlling public administrations, public
institutions and municipalities by way of inspections and
investigations.

It was also tasked with verifying compliance with

applicable rules and regulations through three main and
complementary functions: (1) offering advice on the
restructuring of the public administration and the
improvement of its work methods and procedures; (2)
coordinating joint actions between public administrations;
and (3) supervising public tenders. The institution was built
around six general inspectorates specialising in the various
aspects of public service, a bids administration handling
issues related to public tenders, and a board handling all
matters related to civil service sanctions and to the
institution’s inner workings.

After solid and promising beginnings in the sixties, the next

decade witnessed a decline in the roles and power of
oversight agencies, including Central Inspection, as part of
concerted political efforts to reverse the Chehabi reforms.
This decline deepened during the Lebanese Civil War (1975-
1990). After several post-war rehabilitation attempts, the
recent turn of events brought these agencies back to the
forefront, but the damage was already done.

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 In post-war Lebanon, oversight became a
synonym of compliance rather than

The GOAL performance. The neglected and

project: back
undermined oversight and control system
shifted in its entirety to a mere

to the future compliance-oriented logic, disregarding

performance – the second and more
crucial component of sound audit.

It focused mostly on sanctioning

unprotected street-level bureaucrats and
lower grade civil servants, rather than
assessing and monitoring the
performance of the public administration
as a whole.

Siren Associates’ Governance, Oversight

and Accountability in Lebanon (GOAL)
project came with a new and precise
approach to remedy this problem:
enhancing oversight agencies’ work
standards, providing them with the right
toolbox for their work, rallying political
support around them, and helping them
in regaining popular trust.

GOAL would bring back improved

oversight over the public administration
and, from there, would contribute to
disrupting business-as-usual and to
bringing about much-needed change in
tide with the times.

Central inspection is Lebanon’s primary

audit and inspection agency, offering a
foundation for civil service accountability.
Its jurisdiction is broad and covers all
public administrations, institutions, and
municipalities, bar security and justice
institutions.

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Over the last few years, the institution has been stymied by
a lack of staffing capacity, outdated systems and
processes, poor coordination with other oversight bodies,
and informal political interference.

But in 2019, a critical window of opportunity opened, with

a particularly positive perception of (and unexpected
political support for) the institution’s new leadership. The
potential to catalyse real change was revealed.

Siren Associates decided to build on this momentum through the GOAL project,
supporting Central Inspection to carry out its functions effectively and efficiently.
From inception, the project was grounded in three main components: organisational
development, governance, and development. It had two supporting components: crisis
management, and systems and data analysis. This structure naturally reflected the
slogan originally bestowed upon Central Inspection by President Fouad Chebab,
“Oversight, Development, Advice”, and gave the project a rationale around working “back
to the future.”

CRISIS
MANAGEMENT
SYSTEMS & DATA
ANALYSIS
V. •Data sharing
•Response coordination
•Information & communications IV. •Analysis and advice
technology
•Data & knowledge management
•Data privacy & security
•Open data

I. GOVERNANCE
•Inter-ministerial collaboration
•E-government & Lean Public

ORGANISATIONAL III. II. Service

•Institutional relations with
DEVELOPMENT Central Inspection

•Organisational capability
•Audit methodology & standards
•Processes re-engineering & DEVELOPMENT
workflows
•Inter-municipal collaboration
•Manpower & structure
•Local development & relations
•Training & capacity building
with central government
•Communications
The GOAL project “bullseye” structure •Relations with Central Inspection

The organisational development component aimed at transforming Central Inspection into

a performance-oriented oversight agency by developing its organisational capacity;
improving its audit methodology and standards; re-engineering its processes and
workflows; building the capacity of its human resources; and enhancing its communication.

09
The governance component enabled the institution to
better fulfil its missions of coordinating between public
institutions and improving their operational methods, by
building inter-institutional collaboration, mapping human
resources in the public sector, and digitalising administrative
acts. The latter thereby paved the way for e-government in
the country.

The development component supported Central Inspection’s mission to inform

decision-making at the ministerial level, by covering different dimensions of local
development and linking central government with territorial entities in the design
of public policy.

The crisis management sub-component built Central Inspection’s capacity to

coordinate the response to crises and provide data-driven advice. The systems and
data analysis sub-component supported the above by improving Central
Inspection’s data management; helping it to ensure data privacy and security; and
promoting access to information and transparency.

GOAL’s most visible output, however, was a disruptive digital platform that
embodied and extended all of the project’s components. Created halfway through
the project, it was a tool to gather precise data, address local development needs
and inform decision-making at the national level, as well as being a tangible
solution that citizens could experiment with, helping to restore their faith in public
service.

IMPACT

10
IMPACT: the
project’s
nerve centre

https://impact.gov.lb

The Inter-Ministerial and Municipal Platform The idea was to better inform the central
for Assessment, Coordination and Tracking government about the real needs across
(IMPACT) is the first e-governance platform in Lebanon, so that it might formulate a better
Lebanon. Created in March 2020, it connects adapted response to them.
various state institutions, allows multi-
directional communication, enables users to Thanks to IMPACT’s design scalability, it has
enter data about specific issues, facilitates gradually evolved into a tool supporting
coordination among different stakeholders, incident reporting and crisis management at
and provides data for evidence-based policy the national level through efficient workflows
decisions. that link different stakeholders, quick
notifications and alerts.
Created shortly after the first national Covid-19
lockdown decision, IMPACT was initially built Today, IMPACT is no longer only a Covid-19
to facilitate remote administrative work and response tool, but has become the
the crisis response to the pandemic. It started centerpiece of Central Inspection’s audit
out as a digital tool set up by Central arsenal. As a government-wide digital
Inspection, with technical support from Siren, platform, it connects municipalities to
to help connect municipalities to the Interior ministries, to public institutions, and to civil
Ministry when tracking Covid-19 related cases, society.
needs, and decisions at the local level.

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It also connects ministries and state institutions. It has an
entire ecosystem around it, including complaint and support
centers, as well as different analysis teams from across the
collaborating institutions that have started to publish some of
their analysis online.

By reviving and strengthening the leadership of Central Inspection among civil

servants, IMPACT has empowered change champions within the public
administration to begin the process of re-writing the contract between state and
society.
Additionally, the government-wide stakeholder engagement that has taken place
through IMPACT’s expansion has enabled the identification of additional pockets of
reform within the administration.
GOAL IN NUMBERS
Through the GOAL project and its keystone
that is IMPACT. Central Inspection has
managed to attract like-minded individuals
and groups from across the board: the 14 ministries, 1,077 municipalities and
1,500 mukhtars collaborating on the
Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Interior and
platform
Municipalities, the Ministry of the Displaced
+1,850,000 vulnerable individuals
and the Ministry of Public Health to name a mapped in 1 month
few. +230 government buildings mapped in 2
weeks to assess damage in the
The platform has significantly driven inter-
aftermath of the Beirut Port blast
agency collaboration. Beginning with Covid-
+520,000 Covid-19 cases tracked since
19 response planning, traditionally March 2020
antagonistic institutions have been pushed +1,130 towns and villages mapped
by IMPACT into collaborating. This has through a cross-sectoral survey on rural
occurred even among the most resistant or local development

reactionary political forces, which have now

seen and become reliant on the added-value
that IMPACT provides.

The platform also enhanced collaboration between Central Inspection and civil society
organisations, through constructive engagement with a range of stakeholders around various
issues, including the Lebanese Red Cross, the Skeyes Center for Media and Cultural Freedom, the
Center for Lebanese Studies and the Policy Initiative, as well as leading universities, intellectuals
and public figures in the country.

IMPACT was the initiative that broke a dysfunctional pattern in Lebanon’s political sphere,
succeeding in finding real, straight-forward solutions to an intricate political situation.

12 IMPACT
 This success defied expectations and pushed officials to
see technology as one of the key enablers to addressing
the country’s crises, as evidenced in several official
announcements. For example, it is through IMPACT that
the government organises people’s mobility in periods of
lockdown and curfew: the platform provides the data
about risk levels at the local level as well as the interface
for citizens and institutions to request mobility permits.

IMPACT IN NUMBERS
It is through IMPACT too that residents
register for Covid-19 vaccines and that
authorities monitor the vaccination
2014% increase in followers on Central process and stock distribution across the
Inspection’s official Twitter account country.

+54,700 profile visits in April 2021

alone IMPACT was also the platform through
which 1,077 municipalities and more
1,700,000 impressions since the than 1,500 mukhtars identified and
beginning of the year reported on the most vulnerable
households in need of social aid, and
40 articles and media reports on the
drew the most complete portrait of local
IMPACT platform since the beginning of
the year development and infrastructure needs.

Data security
Today, the wealth of data collected through IMPACT allows Central Inspection to detect
shortcomings and performance failures. But there are unprecedented responsibilities
associated with handing citizens’ personal information and private data. Never shy of a
challenge, Central Inspection was one of the first public bodies to commit to a privacy policy in
line with the highest Lebanese and international standards, while taking all the required
technical measures to ensure the safety and security of the data, and protect it from unlawful
and politicised access.

13 IMPACT
With the support of Siren’s technical and legal research
teams, IMPACT became the first governmental platform
to publish a clear privacy policy and publicly-determined
terms of use around where data is collected, its use,
ownership, processing and retention. As a result, access
to information through the platform and its data
visualisation tools is limited across the public sector in
line with the respective regulating legal framework of
each institution.

True to its being one of the strongest

“The boundaries between professional life and demonstrations of transparency by a
personal life disappeared [through the public sector institution in Lebanon to
project]. I was writing software that was
date, an open data website was built to
impacting my town’s families in need, my
neighbor’s mobility permits, my grandparents' complement IMPACT.
vaccination access …
This gives citizens access to the public
We were taking feedback from the news, and
learning about the specifications for data gathered through IMPACT, and is the
the next deliverables from public officials' most comprehensive, nation-wide, online
declarations on TV. Every line of code had a
human being, a neighbor, a relative or a
data collection operation conducted
family member behind it.” collaboratively by different ministries and

GOAL team member

municipalities.

By making all this data freely accessible, Central Inspection provides citizens with tools and
the evidence to observe, control, and audit the activities of the central and local government.
It is an excellent example of linking best practice in governance and administrative science
to citizens’ needs, to give them the opportunity to voice their concerns and engage directly
with those in power.

“In the job interview, knowing that I will be working on the GOAL project brought back the
sports excitement of my school days. Right now, I realise that I am participating in scoring a
GOAL in the Lebanese corruption’s net.

The journey looks like a sprint toward implementing a culture of transparency in public
administration, sweating to coordinate inter-institutional crisis response and shooting from all
our hearts to score a digital GOAL, make an IMPACT and win an e-government. Now, if
reforming the state means playing literal football, I am all in!”

GOAL team member

14 IMPACT
The back-
The success of the GOAL project was the
result of a constructive partnership between

kitchen: the right implementer and the right partner,

ingredients of with the support of the right donor. It was

also driven by internal and external factors.
success
On the internal front, Siren found the right
talent mix, building a young and diverse
team of research analysts, policy
consultants, and software engineers. We
used an agile project management
approach that values adaptive response
over static plans, and adopted the scrum
framework for team collaboration to ensure
steady internal communication, encourage
self-organising teams and accommodate
change. At all times, we did our best to
remain flexible and responsive in volatile
circumstances, finding workarounds to
remove blockages.

For instance, IMPACT was born amid the

Covid-19 crisis, which revealed a need for
digital solutions. The platform was then
optimised with the succession of challenges
facing Lebanon, from the national
lockdowns, to the Beirut Port blast and the
vaccination campaign. Had the project
followed a rigidly-set path, IMPACT would
have probably not seen the light.

However, being adaptive does not imply a

lack of strategy. Strategic planning remains
a key element of project implementation
and the presence of an overall strategy is
essential when making changes to the
project plan. Risk taking was calculated
and informed by constant research and real-
time monitoring.

15
Moreover, Siren introduced high-end digital tools across IMPACT. Technology
contributed to removing political logjams by taking the discussions to a technical level.
It removed the zero-sum political game, bringing antagonistic stakeholders together.
For instance, IMPACT provided a holistic workflow to the national response to the
Covid-19 crisis, including all relevant ministries, local entities and civil society. The
digital platform was further designed in a way to respond to users’ needs and provide
them with workflows and tools that solve their immediate problems, while enhancing
their medium-term performance. Users found themselves interconnected in a chain of
processes that joined them together in working for the public good., individual users
ended up contributing to the collective optimum and social benefit. Risky features
were banned by design, and constructive dynamics were embedded in the system
from its genesis.

GOAL and IMPACT have a courageous vision,

relying on the right institution to facilitate
“While the Health Minister and
change and drive reform. Had Siren partnered
Interior Minister were clashing in
the media, their technical teams with an institution other than Central
managed to identify areas of Inspection, it is unlikely to have achieved what
collaboration on IMPACT, which
further brought on board two
it achieved today. As one of the leading
CSOs and helped unlock the oversight agency in Lebanon, Central
debacle.”
Inspection was the best positioned institution
to catalyse change in the public sector.
GOAL team member

The project validated its role as one of the

leading oversight agency and champion of
good governance in Lebanon. After long “Our objective is not to
years of marginalisation, the institution is deliver a project; it is to
now regaining the recognition and prestige write history.”
it had during the Fouad Chehab era, Central
Inspection was among the worst
performing, least visible and least supported
GOAL team member
of Lebanon’s state institutions.

Yet, Siren made a bet in supporting Central Inspection, a bet that was grounded in
science, solid research and analysis, and a theory of change addressing the root causes
of decay in the public sector. Real progress was made in recapturing the state by
acknowledging the need for a vision, technocratic expertise, and new systems and
processes in the public administration.

16
The project was also reinforced by a solid network of
partnerships around Central Inspection that ensured
support for it as it is drove change. This network ranged
from ministries and government entities, to local
entities, civil society actors, the general public, and
international actors.

Anecdotal reports suggest that Central Inspection also appeals to the youth, who
are desperately looking for glimmers of hope amid the compounded crises in the
country. Externally, the crises revealed the shortcomings of the current political
system in Lebanon and highlighted the urgency of change. It became clear to
political actors that reform was inevitable, and several ministers and political
stakeholders reached out to Central Inspection to ride the tide of reform.

The project also attracted the islands of

excellence in the public administration, which

“There have been many threats and high-

encouraged and motivated civil servants to
level pressure, to push us to compromise in act as champions of change. By leading by
the face of corruption and giant actors,
example Central Inspection is gradually
letting politics take over, but we never felt
stronger and kept resisting; one of the keys transforming administrative behavior within
to our strength was to put the data on an
the public sector, introducing digital tools and
open site where every citizen and every local
or international observer could track the workflows, but also setting a precedent in
progress and support us.” terms of transparency and access to
information.
GOAL team member

Finally, the project was propelled by the existence of collaborative, trusting relationships
between the British Embassy in Beirut, Siren and Central Inspection.

This enabled a thorough understanding and awareness of the beneficiary’s needs. Siren
was careful to place ownership of problem identification and solution generation in the
hands of Central Inspection, in line with our client-centred consulting philosophy.

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 Conventional wisdom in Lebanon is that elite
capture of state institutions makes the latter
Conclusion: a ineffective, with politicians often perceived as

most virtuous the civil servants’ patrons. Stakeholders (both

local and international) operate with this

cycle assumption in mind and approach the relation

almost exclusively through the prism of
clientelism.
Although clientelism has been, and remains, a powerful force within Lebanese politics,
events of the past year and a half have demonstrated that pockets of reform exist within
the state and warrant our collective attention.

Since October 2019, support for structural reform has grown amongst civil servants.
Reformist individuals have felt empowered by events on the ground, while the ruling
elite’s appointment of competent individuals – done in a self-serving and hasty effort to
signal commitment to reform – has meant a real upsurge in technical knowledge and
capacities.

“I have been going to this ministry for inspections for years, but always felt weak
and powerless. When I started using IMPACT dashboards and data analytics, and
for the first time in my 20 years career, I started to feel I am an inspector that is
respected and that has the power to enhance the administration’s performance.”

Central Inspection inspector

An increasingly antagonistic relationship between the political elite and public

administration has emerged, with clear pockets of transformational change that should
not be ignored. Recognising that these civil servants hold an incredible amount of
institutional memory and administrative capacity, and recognising also that reformist
elements within the administration are under increasing pressure, it is integral that

well-targeted opportunities be sought out and pursued to

support key change champions that provide a bulwark “IMPACT has brought youth
against the current political status quo. energy and tech expertise in
support of oversight digital
Central Inspection has been one such opportunity. It has transformation, to practice their
faith in their country and
played a major role in the success of the GOAL project, actively engage in rebuilding it.”
and has transformed IMPACT into a key tool in its audit
President of Central Inspection
arsenal, making up for understaffing by
improving inspectors’ auditing capacities. In return, the platform ensured higher visibility for
the institution and strengthened its standing as a champion of change in the public sector.

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“There is a crack, a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in”, so goes Leonard
Cohen’s Anthem. Through this dynamic situation in an otherwise lethargic state of
affairs, Central Inspection is managing to overcome the political stalemate, against all
odds, by moving the discussion to the technical level. It is turning the crises that the
country is going through into an opportunity to initiate a long-awaited digital
transition, leveraging the fact that decision-makers have little-to-no other choices left.
This has in turn resulted in a direct and open engagement with the general public, a
first for the Lebanese public sector, which has triggered citizens’ interest and curiosity,
and helped regain some of the long-lost trust in state institutions. A connection has
finally been established and must be strengthened moving forward.

Today more than ever, Siren believes that

“We have the will and
legitimacy to play our role
and complete our oversight
mission, but we never had the
tools and weapons to fight for
our dreams, until GOAL and
IMPACT came along.”
Central Inspection staff member
support to Central Inspection is a strategic
investment in Lebanon’s viability and a long-
term, sustainable approach to fortifying the
country’s resilience in the face of its current
challenges. Siren’s GOAL project has put in
place a most virtuous cycle and paved the
way for a powerful and inclusive Lebanese
system of checks and balances in
government, a system that is leveraging
partnerships and relationships among doers
and young talents in the country, a system
that is built on iterative action and research,
and more importantly, a system that is
responsive to change.

The future of the GOAL project is about broader governance, oversight, and control
within the Lebanese public administration, it entails collecting more data, boosting
administrative and financial audit, reaching out to the Civil Service Board, and building
an active partnership with the Lebanese Parliament. The latter’s oversight function is
one of the cornerstones of democracy, holding the executive accountable for its
actions and ensuring that it implements policies in accordance with laws and budget.
Central Inspection will become the radar of all parliamentary commissions, with
IMPACT providing data, indicators and insights to guide planning and questioning.
From there, the natural course is to go to the Court of Accounts, the justice sector and
prosecution.

19
One year after IMPACT’s first line of code was written, the Ministries of Interior, Justice,
Social Affairs, Agriculture, Industry, Displaced, and Environment; the Presidency of the
Council of Ministers; the Lebanese Armed Forces and Internal Security Forces have all
operated on IMPACT. All municipalities, mukhtars, and hundreds of thousands of
citizens also used the platform.

The growth of the platform has been exponential, providing a unique opportunity for
change from below and from within the administration. Reformist stakeholders have
joined the movement, reactionary forces on the other hand have been trying to
undermine IMPACT and the Central Inspection leadership. This filtering effect in itself is
a strength that will drive growth while the world is watching. With GOAL now on cruise
speed, the small team of twenty-five consultants may well become a team of five
million citizens shaping the future of their country.

For more information about the project, you can visit the below links:
- Siren Associates’ corporate website - https://sirenassociates.com
- Siren Analytics’ corporate website- https://sirenanalytics.com
- Central Inspection’s official website- https://cib.gov.lb
- IMPACT Open Data official website- https://impact.gov.lb

@impact_gov @impact_byci

Version 1.0- June 2021

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