Open public procurement as a tool for social innovation

Krzysztof Izdebski from the ePaństwo Foundation discusses some of the new tools being produced by EU-funded projects for better democratic processes.

Digital Democracy is not only about engaging people in direct decision making processes — it also encompasses the broad scope of tools which address the problem of lack of trust in governments, misuse of public funds and low quality of public services.

This is a problem well-understood by the members of the consortium which created Digital Whistleblower, whose goal is to increase trust in governments and improve the efficiency of public spending across Europe.

On 28th January, the consortium launched of three tools prepared under Horizon 2020 programme:

OpenTender.eu

This platform allowes users to search and analyse tender data from 35 jurisdictions (28 EU member states, Norway, the EU Institutions, Iceland, Switzerland, Serbia, Georgia and Armenia) and to examine the market by providing an overview of public procurement markets, helping buyers and bidders to tender more effectively. It also includes a transparency dashboard which analyses and benchmarks the degree of transparency in public procurement tenders. Users can also check buyers’ administrative capacity or analyse and benchmark public procurement integrity risks.

EuroPAM

EuroPAM is an extension of the World Bank’s Public Accountability Mechanisms Initiative (PAM), a primary data collection exercise that produces assessments of in-law and in-practice efforts to enhance the transparency of public administration and the accountability of public officials. If you are looking for details on Freedom of Information or Public Procurement legislation in EU Member States it is a perfect place to start your research.

MET

Monitoring European Tenders (MET), which is still under construction, is a risk assessment tool for public authorities to assess the degree of integrity of European public procurement procedures. You can find some details in the presentation shown by Dr Francesco Calderoni, who is working on the tool on behalf of the one of consortium members.

Projects like these need access to open data, released in a timely fashion, if they are to succeed. For that reason, it’s important that we treat DigiWhist as a policy tool for decision makers who work with data, and for whom digital innovation is a synonym for sustainable transparency policy. In the coming months, we’re looking forward to explore the impact of DigiWhist tools, which we will share here on the DSI4EU website.

Originally published at digitalsocial.eu.