16th IACC

Public procurement is one of the most useful tools governments have to deliver public services and fulfil the rights of citizens. When governments buy goods or services efficiently, schools are built; hospitals work, highways function and public services are successfully delivered. However, public procurement has traditionally been a closed space to society: information about public tenders is restricted, bidding terms are unclear or contracts are hidden from the public. Such opacity fosters corruption and often high levels of impunity, reducing the conditions for competitive procurement processes.

During the last decade, through different paths, civil society organizations and citizens’ groups have demanded access to information about contracts and have monitored different stages of public procurement as a way of enhancing the benefits of procurement and maximizing the use of public resources. The increased availability and reach of information technologies and the awareness of the power of open data has pushed the demand for increased openness regarding contracting even further. Some of these demands have been transformed into specific tools and mechanisms with significant impact on public procurement in different countries around the world. Moreover, some of these tools have also been developed jointly by governments and civil society organizations. Private sector has increasingly become aware of the importance of this openness and supportive of it. Still, some of these experiences are not connected between them and their impact may not be up to their potential to systematically reduce corruption and impunity.

This session addresses how the articulation of these different and diverse experiences from different actors -ranging from disclosing contracting information to engaging citizens on monitoring or private sector in promoting disclosure- can improve openness and accountability in public procurement processes. The Open Contracting initiative is already bringing together these set of experiences, along with their practitioners. The objective is not only to foster the implementation of such tools and mechanisms but also to collaboratively think about innovative approaches that improve open contracting and discourage corruption and impunity.