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Annual Report 2018 2018 Annual Report Contents ANNUAL REPORT 2018 2018 ANNUAL REPORT CONTENTS 1. Introduction: Better connections to transform public contracting 2. Our strategy 3. Our stories 4. Milestones 5. Implementing open contracting 6. Governance and finances 7. Reporting on our targets Our team in 2018: Andye Sanon, Aminata Bah, Bernadine Fernz, Carey Kluttz, Coby Jones, David Selassie Opoku, Gavin Hayman, Georg Neumann, Hera Hussain, James McKinney, Karolis Granickas, Kathrin Frauscher, Katherine Wikrent, Lindsey Marchessault, Marie Goumballa, Nicolás Penagos Editing: Sophie Bork Design: FrenchBK Introduction: Better connections to transform public contracting Public contracting is the world’s largest marketplace. documents and paper. We’re determined to accelerate One in every three dollars spent by government is on this change by driving systemic reforms, helping a contract with a company; it’s the bricks and mortar innovations jump scale to global impact, and fostering of public benefit where the vital goods, works, and a culture of openness in policy, data, tools and results. services on which we all rely are purchased. As we approach the end of our first four-year strategy Yet many governments don’t seem to know what cycle from 2015-2018, our community has much to be they are buying and selling, for how much, and with proud of: more than 50 governments have committed whom they are dealing. Bureaucracy, inefficiency and to foster transparency and accountability in public malfeasance are rife. contracting; 19 publishers are using our data schema, the Open Contracting Data Standard, to make public And the pace of innovation is slow. Contracting is a contracting information more accessible, machine- compliance-based chore. Transparency takes time and readable and user-friendly, and another 20 are working trouble, and government officials worry about being on similar publishing initiatives; more than 10 decent called out for small technical mistakes. It’s easier for reform programs are saving governments money, them to go to the same reliable old companies again improving opportunities for businesses, and delivering and again rather than embracing innovation or taking better public goods, works and services to citizens. risks. In fact, we’ve met or exceeded all our targets but one: The Open Contracting Partnership (OCP) was born that for systemic impact. We’re not afraid to take risks to change all this. To seize the transformational so we set our ambitions high and will keep on pushing opportunity of making public contracting a user- for those systematic impacts where we see a new way friendly digital service driven by data rather shuffling of doing business emerging in a country. 3 “It takes time to bring politics, data, policy and systematic engagement together to build better connections and solve real-world problems.” But, of course, open contracting is demanding and on the way to those long-term systemic impacts that thoughtful work. It takes time to bring politics, data, we care so much about. Section 4 highlights a packed policy and systematic engagement together to build and exciting year where we’ve launched a vast array of better connections: connecting openness in data new tools to support our partners as well as specialist to openness to engage and collaborate; connecting research for open contracting for infrastructure, advocates for transparency to problem holders in oil and mining or busting the many myths around government, industry, and community groups; to go commercial confidentiality in public procurement. beyond compliance, connecting data analysis to solve Section 5 reviews our regional and national progress real-world social and economic problems; connecting in 2018. Section 6 covers our finances and how we put open contracting leaders to new adopters as mentors the generous support of our funders to best use in the to scale and replicate reforms. year. Lastly, section 7 gives you a systematic overview not only of 2018 but our first four years. We’ve listened to our partners and incorporated their sage advice in our new strategy to get to even more They have been an incredible rush, fuelled by bottom- impact in the future. Section 2 details the key lessons up energy of so many exceptional partners and allies. that we’ve heard and how we will be putting these into Join us for the ride as we race ahead to transfor- action in our new strategy. Section 3 documents the mational change and even more impact in 2019 and many promising signs of change that we’ve seen in 2018 beyond. In Paraguay, students, some too young to vote, are tracking down funds and contracts to ensure the most run-down schools in their city are renovated and repaired. One in an exciting pipeline of stories that document our shift to reforms embedded in concrete social needs. 4 2 Our strategy We’ve come a long way since we spun out of the World of our new strategy. Open contracting can have a Bank in 2015 as a smart, silo-busting initiative to work transformational impact, but it is demanding and across governments, businesses, civil society, and thoughtful work, bringing politics, policy, data, and technologists to disrupt and transform the stolid, risk- cultural change together. averse world of public contracting. We’ve seen eager adoption of the idea of open contracting and of some Last year, we reached out to you to understand how of the specific tools that we support. Over 40 countries, to support you better, with a commitment to align our regions, and cities are working to adopt the Open new strategy around the needs of our community – Contracting Data Standard (and some 19 of them are whether you are the minister of public works or the already publishing). But aside from impressive results civil society watchdog or an aspiring government in Colombia, Paraguay, and Ukraine, implementation contractor. Public contracting cuts across the whole of has often fallen short. In too many cases, transparency government. Unless power realigns behind our allies for transparency’s sake was the main driver for open and partners, progress can easily stall. We want to contracting. ensure that open contracting reforms push through these barriers to deliver enduring change. We are taking this lesson seriously. Learning from our first strategy cycle and the rapid iteration and Here’s the advice you shared with us and what we will experimentation, we now know the cornerstones do about it. 5 You said: Change is tough, plan better for the dips So we will be reviewing our entire approach to ensure we help reformers reach impact and overcome political challenges, inertia and bureaucracy. One significant You said: Pick your engagements pivot for us will be to work more with those actors that (even) better have pressing problems they are trying to solve, be it at the city, sub-national, or federal level. So we will revamp our engagement criteria to include a better understanding of the local political economy to better prioritize our support and make the most of our resources. You said: Engage and support more diverse actors So we will, with new programs to work with the private sector, media, academia, and procurement monitoring organizations. You said: Focus more on the quality of the data and how it is used So we will develop a more systematic approach to measure the “quality“ of our data publishers and track You said: And it’s not just about improvements or regression. We shouldn’t be enabling the data, it’s the whole system dumb pipes of government information for other actors to somehow mystically use to create accountability. So we will explore how to increase the openness of the entire procurement system. This means focusing on improving the system itself and how to drive better reforms through change management and learning. You said: Don’t go So we will stick around for a little longer (probably eight more years instead of four) and support our partners as their programs mature and become sustainable. You said: Think about these things too… So we will. You shared some great additional ideas that we are still mulling over. Ideas ranging from indexing and benchmarking public contracting, mentorship models, and shifting to “open by design.” 6 3 Our stories Through our stories of change, progress and data use, we explore the impact of open contracting and how data can be applied to solve specific public policy and social problems. Many of the initiatives and the inspiring people driving them are part of wider efforts to open up public procurement. While sustainable impact will take some time, the ripple effects are apparent already. NIGERIA Abandoned schools and health clinics scattered across Nigeria are evidence of the devastating consequences of corruption and mismanagement in the country’s service delivery projects. After a long campaign by civil society to open up contracting information, which included the creation of Africa’s first open contracting platform, Budeshi, we are starting to see the first fixes in education and health projects. Meanwhile, the government’s own efforts are shaping up, with the procurement agency training the first of 700 agencies to publish their contracting information proactively on a national open contracting portal. “When we went to the field with information provided by the procuring entity… we saw a lot of projects that were very different to what was on paper [and different government agencies had conflicting data]. The utility of having standards, which we have proven with Budeshi, came to the fore: [Nigeria] needs a system where things are linked up together and everybody sees everything.” Gift Maxwell, Chief Operating Officer, Public and Private Development Centre 7 UGANDA In Uganda, endemic mismanagement and corruption in contracting have been obstacles to ensuring basic public services are delivered effectively to citizens.
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