17th IACC

Ensuring that public contracting is as effective as possible requires for a wide range of actors to be able to work together to make the best decisions they can make about investments and to monitor the implementation of those investments. This can only happen with public access to contracting information and data. To achieve that, Open Contracting is a worldwide movement focused on promoting disclosure and participation in public contracting in all sectors and all types of contracts.

Given the emerging global standards related to access to information and citizen participation, the proposed workshop will focus on showing the value of the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS) as a tool that creates new opportunities to monitor and interact with public contracting information. One of the main use cases this workshop will explore in-depth is to identify and combat fraud and corruption. Open contracting data can be used by the government and non-state actors to scrutinize procurement data and documents for ‘red flags’ that might indicate public monies being misused, improving openness and accountability in public procurement processes.

The objective of this workshop is to present case studies and open contracting tools that by government and civil society that show the impact of applying open data and creating feedback mechanisms to improve public contracting. Examples based on the value of openness but with a clear case for making this open data actionable to enhance participation and interaction of stakeholders around the data.

During the first part of the session case studies from Mexico, Moldova, Ukraine, and the Philippines will provide an overview of the range of progress towards establishing Open Contracting as a global norm, of the impact of its implementation and of the importance of implementing innovative practices for the use of information and data in the public procurement process, like the OCDS.

In the second part of the session, participants will discuss in depth tools, processes and data needs according to the different use cases divided in smaller groups. In addition, the session will gather participants’ feedback and ideas on how access to contracting data could translate into real impact and changes on the ground (access to joined-up data with budgets, spending and company data complemented by feedback mechanisms).