The third installment of our Transparency Case Studies series focuses on public procurement in Sydney, Australia: a deep dive into what the city gets right, what it could improve upon and how to make the system more effective.
Continue readingHow Open Data Can Engage Civil Society and Improve Procurement Oversight
With the release of our report on Philippine public procurement we are now two cases into our deep look at procurement transparency and open contracting. As we look at these cases some important themes about data accessibility have begun to emerge. As I said in our Philippines write up: “absent accessible data, whistleblowers and leaks are the only safeguard against corruption. When the data is not readily available, it can’t enable meaningful oversight.” To be truly accessible, simply posting information online is not enough. For transparency to actually lead to accountability, barriers to using the data must be low. Data should be open to the public without gates, published in open and machine-readable formats, and available in bulk. These are things that we have been longtime proponents of at the Sunlight Foundation, (see our Open Data Guidelines), and our case research so far confirms their importance.
Continue readingTransparency Case Study: Public Procurement in the Philippines
Introduction
For our Philippine case study, we conducted interviews with members of the following groups: staff at transparency NGOs, journalists who have covered procurement, and member organizations representing business interests. Our conversations with these respondents have allowed us to develop a diverse and comprehensive picture of how transparency, information communication technology (ICT) and civil society engagement in public procurement has impacted accountability.
These conversations have provided us with a detailed picture of procurement disclosure and data use in the Philippines since the reforms in 2002. A few findings have become clear:
- For transparency and public oversight mechanisms to work, public data must be public in more than name only. Publishing information online is not enough, especially if it is trapped in a platform that limits how journalists and watchdogs are able to use the data. PhilGEPS data is not widely used by journalists or CSOs because of artificial and needless barriers to use.
- Monitoring this volume of proceedings requires the scale and efficiency of data backed analysis. There are thousands of procurement proceedings every year in the Philippines. For example, as of Sept. 20th, 2013, PhilGEPS, the government e-procurement platform, lists 12,346 active opportunities. The civil sector doesn’t have the capacity to monitor procurement at this scale simply by attending the Bid and Awards Committee (BAC) meetings for each one, as the law allows.
- Without a comprehensive right to information law, access to useful data is largely at the discretion of the procurement entity and varies greatly between procuring entities, depending on the informal trust-based relationships that CSOs have developed with officials.
- Philippine law splits jurisdiction over procurement monitoring, investigation and sanctioning between various agencies, which can leave misconduct and inefficiency unchecked.
Public procurement in the Philippines presents a salient example of how much the specifics of implementation can matter. If transparency is to enable public oversight, disclosure must meet certain conditions of accessibility and usability. Simply posting information online is not enough. For real transparency, data must be open to the public without gates, it must be published in open and machine-readable formats, and it must be available in bulk.
In mandating the use of ICTs in the procurement process and establishing a formal oversight role for civil society the Government Procurement Reform Act took important steps to reform the Philippine procurement system. These reforms, however, have been considered and implemented largely in isolation, to the detriment of procurement integrity. Civil society oversight through the observer system is a manual and resource-intensive task that doesn’t capitalize on the economies of scale and efficiencies that ICTs can enable. Conversely, the integration of ICTs into public procurement has proceeded largely without including CSOs in the process or considering their needs and uses. Nowhere is this more evident than in the limited feature set of the PhilGEPS system.
Joining the dual accountability mandates of ICT enabled transparency and civil society oversight would make both more effective. Technical platform features should be designed with civil society, media, and oversight use cases in mind. Civil society organizations can serve their mandated roles as observers more effectively – and within their resource constraints – if data about all stages of the procurement process is made available. The Philippines case demonstrates that, absent accessible data, whistleblowers and leaks are the only safeguard against corruption. When the data is not readily available, it can’t enable meaningful oversight.
Continue readingTransparency Case Study: Public Procurement in the Slovak Republic
Introduction
Transparency and open data policies and initiatives have reached a state of maturity where it is crucial for us to evaluate them to learn what works, what doesn’t and why. Transparency is not likely to be a cure-all, but we think it is a cure-some; so, we need to figure out where and how it should be best applied. As part of that process, we have been conducting a series of in-depth case studies on the impact of technology enabled transparency policies around the world. Our initial case studies look at transparency in public procurement and we have chosen four countries to study. This analysis discusses our findings about public procurement disclosure by the Slovakian government.
For the Slovakian case study, we conducted interviews or sent questionnaires and surveys to members of the following groups: members of transparency NGOs, journalists who have covered procurement, academic researchers, the Slovakian Government Office of Public Procurement and the Slovakian Business Alliance. The experiences of these diverse respondents have allowed us to develop an equally diverse and comprehensive picture of the impact of the public procurement reforms enacted in Slovakia over recent years.
Our major findings: Slovakians' increased access to public data has led to increased oversight and engagement by the civil sector and the public. However, because of a lack of enforcement, corruption in public procurement remains a significant problem.
Continue readingTransparency Case Studies: Some Early Lessons from the Field
For much of this year I have been conducting research into the impacts of technology enabled transparency policy around the world. A significant step in this process was reading theory and existing evidence to find the footing and context of the project, as well as defining our scope and developing our methodology and research protocol. But over the last several months, the long process of data collection has begun. The first wave of the case study project is in full swing, and so I spend my days setting up and conducting interviews. At this point the data collection on our first case, public procurement in the Slovak Republic, is coming to a close. Despite the early stage, some interesting lessons and themes have already begun to emerge from the conversations I am having.
Continue readingThe Fix-Rate: Integrity Action’s New Transparency and Accountability Impact Metric
Earlier this week Integrity Action’s Fredrik Galtung launched his working paper ‘The Fix-Rate: A Key Metric for Transparency and Accountability’ (PDF). Yesterday my colleague Lee Drutman and I had an interesting conversation about this work with Fredrik, and I wanted to share some thoughts about the Fix-Rate.
With this paper Fredrik and Integrity Action take the position that the anecdote-heavy evidence base linking transparency and accountability interventions needs some more concrete measures. To that end, ‘Fix-Rate’ proposes a metric for measuring impacts, and offers examples of its use in a variety of national and municipal contexts, largely focusing on improvements in public service provisioning and infrastructure projects.
Continue readingDocket Wrench: Exposing Trends in Regulatory Comments
Today the Sunlight Foundation unveils Docket Wrench, an online research tool to dig into regulatory comments and uncover patterns among millions of documents.
Continue readingPrimary Spending Strategies May Have Shifted General Election Outcomes
In the two weeks since Election Day, Sunlight -- along with many others -- have examined the impact of outside money. In competitive House seats we found no statistically observable relationship between the outside spending and the likelihood of victory, and found no evidence of spending impacting outcomes for the Senate either. It's important to note that those who contributed to the $1.4 billion spent by outside groups still matters, though. As Executive Director Ellen Miller notes: "Even if their candidates lost, the influence bought by America's new class of mega donors will remain." Here, we find some indication that outside spending in primary races may have had implications for general election outcomes this cycle. In the competitive races where there was significant primary activity by outside spenders, as compared to a baseline in which parties retaining control of seats they held in the 112th Congress, Democrats over-performed while Republicans significantly underperformed. Furthermore, we found notable involvement by outside Democratic groups in Republican primaries which may have played a roll, while finding little evidence of parallel Republican activity. We looked at the 90 races in the House that were competitive as of September 6th, according to the Cook Political Report (Likely, Lean or Tossup). Of these competitive seats, in the 19 where there was more than $10,000 in outside Democratic spending, Democrats won 17, a success rate of 89%. This was despite the fact that 12 of those 19 seats were previously held by Republicans. In contrast, of the 25 seats where there was over $10,000 in outside Republican spending, Republicans only won 11, or 44%. 17 of these seats had been held by Republicans prior to the election.
Continue readingHow the NSF allocates billions of federal dollars to top universities
As another college year begins, tens of thousands of academics will once again be scrambling to submit proposals to the National Science Foundation, hoping to secure government funding for their research. Each year, the National Science Foundation (NSF) bestows more than $7 billion worth of federal funding on about 12,000 research proposals, chosen out of about 45,000 submissions. Thanks to the power of open data, we can now see how representation on NSF federal advisory committees connects to which universities get the most funding. (Federal advisory committee membership data is a feature of Influence Explorer.) Our analysis finds a clear correlation between the universities with the most employees serving on the NSF advisory committees and the universities that receive the most federal money. Overall about 75% of NSF funding goes to academic institutions. Even when controlling for other factors, we find that for each additional employee a university has serving on an NSF advisory committee that university can expect to see an additional $125,000 to $138,000 in NSF funding.
Continue readingSuper PAC profile: American Bridge 21st Century
The recent buzz that one of the frontrunners to be Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney's vice presidential pick, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, had registered as a foreign agent for the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti came from American Bridge 21st Century, a super PAC that's spent most of its money not on attack ads, but on opposition research.
The registration was old news: A July 17 Washington Post profile of Portman, seen at right, noted it, along with a Patton Boggs attorney's statement that, though registered, Portman hadn't represented Haiti. But it shows that independent ...
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