Every reformer faces the same uncomfortable question: what happens when you leave? If the honest answer is that the reforms leave with you, then you have not reformed anything. You have merely performed integrity for a season.
Institutions are how societies remember. A case-management system that no chairman can quietly override; a promotion process that rewards diligence rather than loyalty; a fraud-risk directorate with its own budget and its own doctrine — these outlive any officeholder. They are the difference between an anti-corruption moment and an anti-corruption culture.
In my years as Secretary to the Commission I learned that the least glamorous work — records, procedures, training curricula — is the most durable. Files outlast speeches. Standards outlast strongmen.
So I judge my current chapter by a simple test: if everything with my name on it were erased tomorrow, would the machinery still run cleaner than it did before? Building toward a yes is the whole job. The rest is noise.