Katherine Wikrent
19 Apr 2018, 10 a.m. Auditorium 3
Open contracting brings together Civic Technologists and stakeholders to ensure government contracting is conducted fairly and effectively. As government contracting is worth trillions annually, Civic Tech that can use open contracting data to save money and improve services generates massive improvements in government spending and quality of life.
Open Contracting Partnership share how their partners have used Open Data, Civic Tech, and citizen monitoring to reform public spending, and the results of their investigation into how Civic Tech has led to real local results. Through monitoring and evaluation frameworks and in-country impact analyses, they found:
Ukraine: The Dozorro citizen monitoring platform has flagged 5,000 suspicious public tenders in six months, 50% of which were resolved, and 1,200 tenders revised, 22 criminal charges pressed, and 79 sanctions issued. Paraguay: The DNCP procurement portal with easy-to-customise visualisations have increased citizen monitoring (3.4 million annual visits) and led to an increase in savings of procurement costs of 1.4%. Amendments on contracts, a prime opportunity for corruption, dropped from 19% of all contracts to 3%. Colombia: Open contracting data enabled the Bogota Education Ministry to identify and break an alleged price-fixing scheme in the provision of school meals. The $130 million previously shared by 12 companies is now allocated to 54.
This work expands on results Open Contracting Partnership shared at TICTeC Taiwan. They present their updated field methodology around engaging national and local organisations to jointly assess the state of public contracting and measure impact, and share successes and how they plan to more smartly align open contracting data, Civic Tech, and public participation to track spending and demand accountability. Lastly, they share some challenges, such as how to measure data quality, to invite advice from the audience.