Specialized Anti-Corruption Agencies (ACAs) are a relatively new type of public institution created with the purpose of bundling a government’s response to the challenge of fighting corruption. They have often failed to live up to the expectations vested in them (UNDP 2013). Despite this collective international experience, many ACAs still lack an explicit structured approach to produce and analyze data to monitor and evaluate their success. And even though by 2020, 114 countries have had one or more such agencies (AFA 2020), little research is available on them as institutions, in particular studies that systematically identify success factors (Schöberlein 2020b).

Against this backdrop, the objective of the present note is to provide guidance for addressing this core issue. It proposes a method in four basic steps to review and strengthen the strategic approach of ACAs in ASEAN to define and implement a data-based system for evaluating their performance.