Club of Rome: Eco-nomics for an Ecological Civilization
UK Open Contracting Workshop: DigiWhist Research
1. DIGIWHIST and UK comparison
Mihály Fazekas and Bence Tóth
05 Nov 2015
2. DIGIWHIST - The Digital Whistleblower. Fiscal Transparency,Risk
Assessment andImpactof Good Governance Policies Assessed
Goal:
Advancing anticorruption, transparency, and spending efficiency in public procurement
Open data and indicators for 35 European countries: EU, EEA, Caucasus
Data:
Micro-level procurement data
Company information
Public organisation information
Asset declarations
Transparency and procurement legislation
Consortium: Cambridge, Hertie, CRCB, Datlab, Open Knowledge Foundation, Transcrime
Using OCDS data template (with minor
differences)
3. Public procurement regulation
Different regulation in each country + EU regulation -> Scope of publicly
available data is different
UK:
1. National level
low threshold: only 10000 GBP
Scope of disclosed information is limited
2. Above EU threshold tenders:
public works 4.3 m GDP, services and supplies: 111 k GDP
Wide scope of disclosed information, but many errors
4. Data availability – categories
1. Contract related items
2. Dates
3. Requirements
4. Documentation
5. Funding
6. Buyer information
7. Bidder/Winner information
8. Bids
9. Prices
10. Cancellation/correction
11. Other information
Q: What is publicly
available?
5. Data availability – categories
1. Contract related items
2. Dates
3. Requirements
4. Documentation
5. Funding
6. Buyer information
7. Bidder/Winner information
8. Bids
9. Prices
10. Cancellation/correction
11. Other information
a) Title
b) Procedure type
c) Negotiated procedure reason
d) Description
e) Type (service/goods/construction)
f) Size (above/below EU threshold)
g) Location of performance
h) Variants accepted
i) Deposits
j) Electronic auction used
k) Framework agreement
l) Award criteria
m) Main object/CPV code
n) Announcement ID
o) Contract ID
p) Is it a DPS (Dynamic Purchasing System)
6. Data availability – categories
1. Contract related items
2. Dates
3. Requirements
4. Documentation
5. Funding
6. Buyer information
7. Bidder/Winner information
8. Bids
9. Prices
10. Cancellation/correction
11. Other information
a) Estimated contract value
b) Final contract value
c) Bid values
d) Total amount paid at contract completion
e) Highest bid value
f) Lowest bid value
7. Data availability – comparison
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
Based on DIGIWHIST data
8. TED:2009-13
13 mandatory items:
Organisation name, address
Contract values
Subcontract
Dates
Actual data availability (above the EU threshold)
Source: Fazekas, M., Dávid-Barrett, E. (2015): Corruption Risks in UK Public
Procurement and New Anti-Corruption Tools
procuring body address winner name winner address winner town winner post code winner country contract signature date nuts-3 code of contract performance including EU funds or not number of bids received type of assessment criteria used contract value using subcontracts or not
Figure 2. Average rate of missing information in OJEU (TED), Ncontract=1.403,939
Source: (European Commission-DG Internal Market and Services, 2015)
EU thresholds:
This sample contains those tenders, that are above the EU thresholds, irrespectible of whether it is financed by the EU or not.
Based on the simple measure, UK seems fine – the share of single bidder contracts is low!
TED data 2009-2014
Contract related items; Dates; Requirements; Documentation
Bidder/winner information: names, address, subcontracting etc
Bids: # of bids, disqualification
Price: estimated, final price, bid values, etc.
Using a more complex indicators, the picture is a bit more mixed.
CRI: it is a complex measure, proxying contract level corruption risks -> procedure type, bid exclusion, call for tender publication, length of advertisement period, weight of non-price related evaluation criteria, lenght of decision period
2. BUT: right now, it is not possible even theoretically to use more sophisticated measures to assess competition/corruption/collusion risks in case of the national procedures in the UK.