“Public Procurements in Practice”

The Importance of Procurement Monitoring

Public procurement affects all aspects of people’s lives and assumes a large share of government budgets

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has estimated the value of government procurement markets worldwide to be US $ 2 trillion annually

Transparency International (TI) estimates that damage from corruption on public procurement can represent on average 10 to 25% of a contract’s value

Corruption in public procurement is not just about money: it costs lives

Who Can Monitor?

Everyone – from individual citizens to high level government officials – can play a role in ensuring that tax payers’ money spent on procurement delivers good quality services at a fair economic cost for all

Governments and other control bodies alone do not have the capacity to monitor all procurement processes effectively

Civil society can play an important role in bringing independence to procurement monitoring

The inclusion of all stakeholders acts to broaden and strengthen procurement monitoring

TI has followed this approach for over 15 years

The Integrity Pact

One of TI’s flagship tools - developed to help governments, businesses and civil society fight corruption in the field of public contracting

Agreement between government and all bidders for a (public sector) contract so that neither side will pay, offer, demand or accept bribes

Used successfully in more than 15 countries around the world in the last 10 years, in all sectors and for all types of contracts

Some Examples:

Germany – Berlin Schönefeld new international airport, a project worth € 2.4 billion

Latvia – The construction of the National Library - Ministry of Culture/New Three Brothers Agency

Mexico – IPs have been used in nearly 100 contracts worth approximately US $ 30 billion in different sectors

Other Examples of Procurement Monitoring

Bulgaria : Expert Monitoring Group

Main sources of information to carry out monitoring: audit reports of the National Audit office and State Agency for Financial Inspection and interviews with experts

Expert Monitoring Group (EMG) formed by public procurement experts and NGO representatives focus on 3 categories;

(i) methodology indicators; (ii) data collection tools; and (iii) on the spot monitoring

Monitored 13 conditions to be determined using 28 standard indicators of transparency and accountability

Feedback on results to government and advocacy for procurement reform

Other Examples of Procurement Monitoring

Argentina : Public Hearings

The responsible authority convenes citizens, businesses, experts; presents details of project and procurement provisions; and enables participants to express their suggestions and objections

Recommendations to be taken into account and incorporated where appropriate

Open to citizens from all backgrounds, ages and interests

Implemented primarily for city/local government projects

wider involvement enables wider scrutiny on the behaviour of contracting parties both during the bidding process and contract execution

Some public hearings can attract close to 500 attendees

Procurement Monitoring Innovation

TI is constantly working to find new ways to monitor procurement processes more effectively

The set of indicators developed by TI Serbia to measure performance of the public procurement system is testament to this

The whole TI movement expects to learn from Serbia, and adapt and apply the indicators to other countries and contexts

We also hope the project will raise particular interest in the European context