It has been estimated that governments spend an average of $9.5 trillion every year through contracts. But contracting information is often not available for the public to scrutinize. There is enormous potential for increased openness in contracting to stem the problems that arise from corruption and mismanagement of public resources. Especially in the wake of the global financial crisis where there is increased pressure to account for use of scarce resources, there is a growing need for more open contracting.
Contracts are at the nexus of revenue generation, budget planning, resource management and delivery of public goods.
$95 billion dollars is 3 times the entire amount of foreign aid that the US gives in year.
$95 billion is 500 times the proposed education budget for Nigeria in 2014.
Traditional, top-down approaches have not worked
The early work in this governance and contracting agenda focused on improving the management of the public sector. The central tenets of this included improvements in core public financial management systems and establishment of independent anti-corruption bodies.
The next wave of the work was to strengthen checks and balances. This included providing greater autonomy and capacity to audit institutions and clarifying the role of legislative bodies on their oversight responsibilities.
Strong and capable institutions still matter, but more recently, the role of demand-side institutions and non-formal institutions of accountability has become more pronounced. In particular, national and global CSOs like Transparency International are making significant contributions in the fight against corruption.
What we have learned and what we continue to witness is that governance and contracting is everyone’s business. Even more recently citizens are getting more directly engaged and are actively mobilizing against corruption systems and demanding change. We have seen this in the Arab Spring, and here in India through initiatives such as I Paid a Bribe. We have moved from a supply side view to something that is more open and participatory.
New trends are emerging. We now have evidence that citizens want their governments to be more open, and they want to be more involved in government decision-making.
We should work to move the dial towards a new norm of radical openness. For example, currently, there are still debates about whether citizens have a right to information or whether all public contracts should actually be made public. A norm of radical openness would end these arguments and make openness the default in the public arena; it should no longer be acceptable for institutions to be not open, transparent, and participatory. With the evidence that we have gathered, such as those from the Global Opening Government Survey, and the tools that are widely available - there is no excuse. Openness is the new social contract.
We have conducted the largest ever survey on perceptions of open government. With over 95,000 responses in 62 countries, 61% of people say they would like their government to be more open.
According to the Global Opening Government Survey, 64% of respondents in India said they want their governments and businesses to be more open, as it leads to trust and efficiency. The same number of respondents believe they should have a say in government spending and contracting.
With advances in technology, it is easier than ever to achieve radical openness. Technology is giving citizens better access to data and information on contracting, allowing for better visualizations and connections to be made between the contracting data and corporate registry data, for example.
Data has value if it is not being used. We should build the capacity of stakeholders to be engaged in governance and work collaboratively in this agenda. Sometimes this means taking open data offline, and taking it from the national to the level of where local communities can adapt it to their needs and context.
Open Contracting in the model for this new type of engagement and openness because it promotes disclosure, citizen engagement and data.
(SLIDE 15) Open contracting refers to norms and practices for increased disclosure and participation in a variety of contract types at all stages of public contracting and across all sectors and at all stages of the contracting cycle.
The movement is being led globally by a steering group made up of 8 member organizations, and a number of coalitions working on the ground to make change in their communities. They are working with governments, media and other CSOs to monitor everything from extractive industries to road construction to service delivery.
Example of Disclosure: In the Slovak Republic, contracts must be published online in order to be valid.
Example of Engagement: In Mongolia, procurement law mandates citizen participation in contract monitoring
Example of Data: In Mexico, the government publishes data that is available for analysis and easily able to be compared with business data.
