2018 marks the anniversary of a multitude of different political as well as social turning points in human history. While the festivities commemorating the end of World War I were widely broadcasted and spoken about, two anniversaries often fall short of the public's attention: The 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as the 15th anniversary of the United Nations Convention against Corruption, leading to the International Anti-Corruption Day on the 9th of December.

Corruption, a risk to the SDGs

Corruption presents a serious and often underestimated threat in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, a list of 17 goals introduced to tackle current challenges and transform our world. Established in 2015 under the leadership of former United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the SDGs aim at providing a united blueprint for action in order to achieve both peace and prosperity within the global community. Recent studies have frequently argued in favor of the vital and important role anti-corruption measures can occupy when it comes to the implementation of the SDG’s.

The true costs of corruption

The economic, political and social complexity of corruption affects both developed and developing countries and sabotages global efforts of democratization, decreases economic growth and fuels political and social instability by interfering in electoral campaigns, inciting distrust towards governmental and economic institutions and demoralizes the rule of law.

Organizations such as the United Nations Human Rights Council have intensified their attention towards the impact of corruption on the global implementation of human rights. The increasing examination of the complex interplay between human rights abuse and corruption led to the conclusion that disadvantaged groups are disproportionately suffering from corruption because of their greater reliance on public services and goods. Estimates by the World Economic Forum suggest that up to 5 percent of the global gross domestic product or up to $2.7 trillion are lost annually due to global corruption. The loss of important financial means, often further hampers the success of the Sustainable Development Goals for years to come.

Building awareness

Most of the countries are making little to no progress in combating corruption according to the latest Corruption Perception Index, published by Transparency International.
The report rated 180 countries on their perceived levels of public sector corruption according to experts and business people. While the corruption threatens all 17 SDGs, its dangerous effect becomes particularly clear when speaking about specific goals:

• Goal 8: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
• Goal 9: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation
• Goal 10: Reduce inequality within and among countries
• Goal 16: Promoting peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, providing access to justice for all and building effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

1. Read our eBook on the Ethical Expectations to see what other factors are influencing the push for corporate responsibility and engagement with SDGs
2. Explore LexisNexis tools for mitigating corruption risk with enhanced due diligence and ongoing risk monitoring.
3. Share this blog post with your colleagues and connections on LinkedIn.

Now more than ever, understanding the competition is a requirement for business success. From equipping teams with intelligence that allows them to better connect with customers, to identifying the next steps your industry will take before they take them, staying one step ahead matters.

If you’re responsible for conducting, organizing and socializing competitive research, how do you feel confident in the insights you’re sharing? According to an Inc.com article on competitive research, “by monitoring competitors on an on-going basis you get to know their behavior and so can start to anticipate what they will be likely to do next.” Then you can plan your own strategies so that you keep your own customers while winning customers away from competitors.

To help you focus your efforts and get the most return, we’ve put together tips for more productive, effective competitive research.

1.  Trust Your Content Sources

More often than not, faulty research can be traced back to faulty content. Reliable research comes from more than Google searches and quick hits on free digital platforms. Working with a partner who invests in the vetting, curation and management of ongoing content sources is a strategic first step. First, it eliminates much of the time you would invest in finding the best sources. Secondly, it connects you to full articles and complete information, versus links or excerpts, meaning you are also connecting to the context in addition to the content.

2. Go Back in Time

Historical information can be powerful. Don’t fall into the trap of only focusing on the present day. While what your competitors are doing now matters, what they’ve done over time can also reveal key insights. Historical data, like investments, hires, patents, acquisitions, court cases and more can help you uncover patterns and help you predict behaviors.

3. Specialize in Social Media

Social media platforms have become a part of daily business and our daily lives. This means that they carry just as much validity as a research tool as do periodicals, newspaper articles and court case documents. What does this mean for competitive insight? It means you need to monitor social conversations about your competitors. This can give you important information on not only what they’re doing, but also what people think about them as organizations. You can gauge sentiment as well as data.

4. Bring the Past and Present Together

There is real value in looking both at the past for historical context and gauging present day opinions and expectations. Don’t fall into the trap of considering these research streams separately from each other. The past and present should come together to give you a holistic view. This sounds simpler than it is. Often, it can be challenging to bring long-view data together with real-time insights because if you’re working with partners, few companies specialize in both. Be sure to find a solution (or bundled solutions) that can integrate long- and short-term data for the fullest possible view of the competition.

5. Don’t Forget To Share

Lastly, don’t let all your hard work go to waste. It’s important to formalize your insights into easy to access and understand reports that teams can use in their daily work. How are you connecting your information to recruitment, sales, marketing and other teams who could benefit from what you’ve worked so hard to uncover? There are several digital brands that can help you take your data and transform it into graphics and visuals with real impact. Be sure to check out visme.com, canva.com and piktochart.com, to name a few.

Ready to learn even more? Check out these solutions and resources developed specifically for enhancing your competitive research efforts.

https://www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/products/nexis.page

https://www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/products/media-intelligence-research-and-analytics.page

https://www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/products/newsdesk.page

Forget about the turtles. Today is International Ninja Day, but what we’re on about has more to do with regulatory risk than teenagers or (as far as we know) mutants. Why does International Ninja Day make us think ‘compliance program’?

International Ninja Day was the brainchild of website Ninja Burger, which came up with the idea in 2003 to celebrate the know-how and discipline needed to deliver burgers at great speed. Okay, so it’s a parody website. But it’s pushing a noble cause. And while we may seem to be drawing a long bow—or more aptly, wielding a katana (curved sword) or nunchuks (those fearsome stick-and-chain things)—the know-how, discipline and speed associated with ninjas has become embedded in corporate lexicon in the form of the term ‘compliance ninja’.

Another thing ninjas are associated with is the ability to absorb pain while triumphing over formidable odds, which is also relevant to the devious dark forces and increasingly complex regulatory requirements that compliance ninjas must cope with.

In short, the corporate compliance area of risk management is about maintaining an up-to-date ultra-awareness of anti-bribery, anti-money laundering and sanctions laws, especially in the context of doing business internationally. If that is to prove effective, it must be coupled with thorough due diligence and ongoing risk monitoring, and the ability to swiftly execute appropriate responses when faced with potential or actual breaches.

As any true compliance ninja might be heard to mutter while heading for the filtered water dispenser: “Ninjitsu!” (the strategy and tactics of unconventional warfare and espionage practiced by ninjas).

On the website of the Association of Corporate Counsel is a list of the top 10 basics for complying with the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, according to adjunct professor and anti-corruption compliance specialist Stephen Clayton. He makes no reference to ninjas, but he whirls mean nunchuks in making points with global applicability.

At the top of his list is the observation that corruption in international business is commonly and frequently ignored. “Managers and lawyers in most companies want to believe they work for clean, ethical organizations that hire law-abiding employees,” says Clayton. “This positive bias often blinds US business people to the reality of international business, where bribes, kickbacks and false or unrecorded transactions are common. Corrupt activity also exists in the U.S., of course, but it is more difficult to understand what is going on in foreign countries when your U.S. managers have little or no language ability or cultural context.”

Secondly, he emphasizes that FCPA investigations and cases against companies and individual company managers and employees are more common than many people think.

Thirdly, he says it’s crucial that companies assess and fully understand their risk of being involved in international bribery. “The FCPA’s definition of ‘government official’ is extremely broad and includes even low-level employees of government-owned companies. Some countries expose U.S. companies to very high risk of corruption. If you don’t understand your company's specific risk, you may fail to spend your scarce compliance resources in a cost-effective manner.”

Clayton goes on to stress the need for companies to have a standalone international anti-corruption compliance policy, and an executive accountable for the ‘tone at the top’; the need to train board members, management, employees and third parties in anti-corruption matters; and the need to know all the third parties a company uses in business overseas, and to conduct due diligence.

“In FCPA jargon, an ‘intermediary’ is a third party who assists a company in some aspect of its foreign business,” he says “Understand that intermediaries do not shield your company from liability—they create liability. Ninety percent of FCPA cases brought by the U.S. government [as of 2011] involve conduct by third parties.”

All of which gives some indication of what it takes to be a badass compliance ninja.

Incidentally, on the website National Today, listing special days around the world, it is suggested that International Ninja Day be celebrated by taking a martial arts class, watching a ninja movie and dressing like a ninja. In the off-chance that you, as a compliance ninja, don’t have a full ninja costume, there’s an out: wear a plain, black t-shirt, which is “pretty much the foundation of being a badass.”

SNCJ devotes the last three issues of each year to a preview of the coming state legislative sessions. Here in part one of that three-part series we’ll take a look at a few of the issues that are likely to draw the attention of state lawmakers next year. And like last year, most of them are already familiar.

Cybersecurity: Hacking of election infrastructure doesn’t appear to have been as much of a problem in last month’s midterm elections as it was in 2016. But other recent developments, most notably the massive Equifax data breach last year, continue to make cybersecurity one of the most active issues in state legislatures.

At least 35 states have considered more than 200 bills and resolutions dealing with cybersecurity in 2018, about a quarter of which have been enacted, according to analysis of LexisNexis State Net legislative data by the National Conference of State Legislatures. The number of introduced measures is down somewhat from last year, when there were 240 introductions in 42 states, but the number of enactments is about double the 24 in 2017. And this year’s numbers are well up from the 104 introductions and 24 enactments or adoptions in 28 states in 2016.

As in previous years, the measures cover a broad range of subjects, including election security, cybercrime penalties, cybersecurity education and training, data breaches, school cybersecurity, security practices at government agencies, cybersecurity of critical infrastructure, funding for cybersecurity programs, tax breaks for cybersecurity investment, requirements for cloud computer storage services and security of biometric information. And it’s unlikely that state lawmakers’ concerns about such issues will diminish much next year.

Internet/Data Privacy: Bills dealing with internet privacy have been considered in at least 24 states this session, according to NCSL. Most of those measures were introduced last year in response to the repeal of federal internet privacy protections. Many of the bills have failed. But there have been enactments in three states: California (AB 375), Oregon (HB 4155) and Vermont (SB 289). And measures are still pending in a few other states, including Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York.

The national outrage sparked by the news earlier this year that Facebook allowed the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to access the personal data of tens of millions of its users without their direct consent may also have given some impetus to state efforts to increase privacy protections for users of social media websites. Social media privacy measures are currently pending in at least four states, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island, which also adopted a resolution (HR 8353) creating a commission to study the issue, according to LexisNexis State Net’s database.

Blockchain/Digital Currencies: Blockchain or “distributed ledger technology” - the technology behind bitcoin and other digital currencies that allows the exchange of virtually anything of value between two parties without the need for a third party to mediate it - is still an emerging legislative issue in the states.

But bills dealing with the issue have been introduced in at least a dozen states and enacted in five this year, according to LexisNexis State Net’s legislative tracking system. They include a measure enacted in Colorado (SB 86) concerning the use of blockchain technology to protect government records and a bill that failed in Nebraska (LB 694) that would have prohibited local governments from regulating or taxing blockchain technology.

With blockchain promising to bring changes as big as those brought by the Internet, more blockchain legislation is undoubtedly on the way.

Legislative activity specific to digital currencies like bitcoin, the form of blockchain technology most people are familiar with, however, is already prevalent in the states.

At least 20 states have introduced and six states have enacted bills or resolutions dealing with digital currencies in 2018, according to analysis by NCSL and State Net. That analysis also shows the volume of activity this year is about double what it was in 2017.

Much of the introduced and enacted legislation concerns the applicability of money transmission laws to virtual currencies or the addition of such currencies to laws governing unclaimed property.

But the measures also address a range of other issues, including the payment of taxes with digital currencies (Arizona SB 1091, Georgia SB 464, Illinois HB 5335, and New York AB 9782), which Ohio just became the first state to allow, although without legislative action; requirements for initial coin offerings, the crypto-world equivalent of initial public offerings (Arizona HB 2601); the addition of “cryptocurrency” to the definitions of certain crimes (Michigan HB 6253, HB 6254 and HB 6258); digital currency business development (New Jersey AB 1906 and New York AB 9862 and AB 11018); the exemption of cryptocurrencies from property taxes (Wyoming SB 111); and the taxation of virtual currency transactions (Vermont SB 269, as introduced, and Connecticut HB 5001).

All of this legislative activity has come in what has been a relatively quiet year for cryptocurrencies, with transaction volumes well down from their December 2017 peak, when the price of a single bitcoin shot up to $19,499, and the value of transactions on the Bitcoin network hit nearly $5.8 billion in a single day, almost a quarter of Visa’s average daily transaction value. It wouldn’t be too surprising to see state lawmakers’ interest in cryptocurrencies ratchet up even higher if there’s another spike in cryptocurrency prices.

Remote Sales Taxes: In June the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a law passed in South Dakota in 2016 (SB 106) had freed it from a longstanding legal precedent barring states from imposing sales taxes on internet and mail-order retailers that didn’t have a physical presence within their borders. Since that decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair, only two other states, New Jersey (AB 4496) and Utah (SB 2001 a), have enacted economic nexus-based remote sales tax laws similar to South Dakota’s, although a few states passed such laws prior to the ruling, and 27 have begun enforcing economic nexus-based remote sales tax requirements that rely on existing statutes or regulations, according to information compiled by the Sales Tax Institute.

One major reason for the lack of legislative action on the issue this year is simply that a lot of states had adjourned their regular sessions before the Wayfair ruling was issued. But there are a number of considerations that may also have been giving states pause, including the prospect of litigation, which kept even South Dakota from enforcing SB 106 until five months after the Wayfair ruling, and aspects of South Dakota’s tax system singled out by the court in its decision, such as the state’s adoption of the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement, which only half of the 16 states that aren’t currently enforcing economic nexus sales tax requirements have signed onto.

Max Behlke, director of budget and tax policy for NCSL, said in a podcast after the Wayfair ruling that with both remote sales taxes and compliance with the federal tax changes enacted last year to attend to, “Next year is going to be a huge year for state and local tax activity in state capitals.”

Transportation/Technology Infrastructure: Oct. 1 was the 25th anniversary of the last time Congress increased the federal gas tax, the primary source of federal funding for highway and transit projects across the country. The tax has stood at 18.4 cents per gallon for unleaded fuel and 23.4 cents per gallon for diesel since that date back in 1993. And a divided Congress next year may be no more inclined to alter that situation. So states are likely to continue exploring their own sources of transportation funding, including not just gas tax hikes, which have come in 28 states since 2013, but also other options like public-private partnerships, which 17 states considered in 2018, and vehicle miles traveled (VMT) fees, considered by 11 states this year, according to NCSL’s transportation funding and finance state bill tracking database.

Bills facilitating the development of “small-cell” infrastructure needed to deploy the next generation of wireless technology, 5G, could also be popular in statehouses next year. Twenty states considered and nearly half of them enacted such legislation this year, according to NCSL.

Marijuana legalization: This year Vermont (HB 511) became the first state to legalize marijuana for adult recreational use through the legislative process rather than the ballot box, as in the other nine mostly blue states where recreational use has been legalized. A wave of legislative enactments in other states seems unlikely next year. But 21 states considered legalization measures this year, according to NCSL. And as a result of last month’s elections, seven more state governments will be entirely under Democratic control next year, including four where recreational marijuana use is not yet legal: Connecticut, Illinois, New Mexico and New York.

At least 35 states have considered bills or resolutions dealing with cybersecurity in 2018, according to analysis of LexisNexis State Net legislative data by the National Conference of State Legislatures. Twenty-two states have enacted such measures.