Open Contracting for emergency response: how to use open procurement data and red flags to monitor public purchases.

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments are relying on public procurement as the main vehicle to purchase medical materials and infrastructure. Transparent, open, accountable and data-driven procurement practices have allowed governments to buy better and faster. Also, open data has been used by civil society and journalists to monitor the delivery of the goods and services and spot red flags. In this session, we want to showcase how implementing the open contracting principles can make a difference in how governments conduct public procurement, and share data-driven methodologies to spot and analyze potential fraudulent practices used by civil society and journalists to monitor government purchases.

We will share two products: The Open Contracting Data Standard, which is a global standard that provides shareable, reusable, and machine-readable open data on public contracting across the entire cycle of public procurement. We want to show its value, how governments can implement it and how it can provide an opportunity to dive deeper into understanding the health, integrity and effectiveness of the public sector. We will also show how partners are using the standard and share our guidance on how to use it for the emergency response. Our red flags methodology, that details around 150 suspicious behaviour indicators in procurement that can be calculated with open contracting data. These flags occur at all points along the entire chain of public procurement-from planning to tender to award to the contract, itself, to implementation. We will focus particularly on common procurement Red Flags related to emergency procurement.