Data Engineer/Full-Stack Web Developer

The Government Transparency Institute is looking for a new Data Engineer/Full-Stack Web Developer colleague in Budapest/Vienna. We welcome experienced applicants to join our dynamic team to contribute contribute to high-impact public policy projects funded by the European Union, UN, IMF, and World Bank with developing data pipelines and scalable web platforms that make governance-related data accessible, searchable, and actionable.

Application process

We are currently hiring for the position on a first-come, first-served basis. Interested candidates are encouraged to apply …

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Public procurement cartels: A large-sample testing of screens using machine learning

Fazekas, Mihály; Tóth, Bence; Wachs, Johannes & Abdou, Aly (2026). Public procurement cartels: A large-sample testing of screens using machine learning. International Journal of Industrial Organization. 104.

Due to the high budgetary costs of public procurement cartels, it is crucial to measure and understand them. The literature developed screens that work well for selected cartel types and with high quality data, but it didn’t produce generalisable knowledge supporting policy and law enforcement on typically available datasets. We simultaneously measure multiple …

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Improving Public Procurement Outcomes: A Review of Tools and the State of the Evidence Base (2025 update)

Adam, Isabelle; Blum, Jürgen Rene; & Fazekas, Mihály. (2025) Improving Public Procurement Outcomes: A Review of Tools and the State of the Evidence Base (2025 update). GTI-WP/2025:01, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.

Considering that about 15% of global GDP flows through public procurement systems, there is a strong need for evidence on what works in this field. This paper systematically reviews the state of the evidence in academic and policy literature on public procurement reforms and their impact on value for …

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Public procurement datasets underpinning the project on corruption risks and natural disasters

Government Transparency Institute (2025) Public procurement datasets underpinning the project on corruption risks and natural disasters, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.

The project “The Corrupting Effect of Political Connections in Public Procurement through Crises” is releasing datasets on public tenders across 13 countries: Bangladesh, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, Dominican Republic, France, Georgia, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Paraguay, Peru, and Ukraine. Alongside the republished structured data gathered from official sources, the release also includes a set of corruption risk indicators developed by the …

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Developing a data-driven corruption risk model to strengthen integrity in Belgium. Practical considerations for the Federal Internal Audit.

Fazekas, Mihály; Poltoratskaia, Viktoriia; Wells, Helene; & Tierens, Michel. (2025). Developing a data-driven corruption risk model to strengthen integrity in Belgium. Practical considerations for the Federal Internal Audit. OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/e85587eb-en.

In light of increasing demands for transparency and accountability in public finance, digital transformation is emerging as a strategic priority for oversight and integrity institutions. This technical paper explores the experience of Belgium’s Federal Internal Audit (FIA) in developing a data-driven audit risk model, supported by the OECD …

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Public procurement data processing

Government Transparency Institute (2025) Public procurement data processing (Version 1.0). GTI-R/2025:06. Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.

Understanding government spending requires standardised and cross-country comparable data. This technical report accompanies GTI’s Global Public Procurement Dataset (GPPD) publication and explains how public procurement announcements are collected, parsed, cleaned, matched and mastered. The process starts with comprehensive source mapping and the automated scraping of HTML portals, XML feeds, APIs and CSV dumps. Each publication is then parsed into a unified JSON template. The cleaning …

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Procuring Low Growth : The Impact of Political Favoritism on Public Procurement and Firm Performance in Bulgaria

Fazekas, Mihaly; Poltoratskaya, Viktoriia; Marc Tobias Schiffbauer; Tóth, Bence. Procuring Low Growth : The Impact of Political Favoritism on Public Procurement and Firm Performance in Bulgaria (English). Policy Research Working Paper WPS11085; Prosperity Washington, D.C. : World Bank Group. 

This paper assesses the impact of favoritism in public procurement on private sector productivity growth. To this end, it combines three novel microeconomic data sets: administrative data on firms, including more than 4 million firm-year observations and rich financial and ownership …

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Data Science Meets Political Economy: Applications to Legislative Favouritism around the World

Benoit, Cyril; Brenner, Dominik & Fazekas, Mihály (2025) Data Science Meets Political Economy: Applications to Legislative Favouritism around the World. In Sarah Giest, Bram Klievink, Alex Ingrams, and Matt Young (eds.): Handbook of Governance and Data Science. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK. Chapter 3.

Merging governance studies and data science, this Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of how these fields interact with each other, driving a greater understanding of and guidance for the data-driven transformation of government.

Bringing together contributions from …

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Maximising the Benefits of Effective Competition in Public Procurement in Slovenia

OECD (2025), Maximising the Benefits of Effective Competition in Public Procurement in Slovenia, OECD Public Governance Reviews, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/c1e5d31f-en.

This report analyses competition in public procurement in Slovenia and the rationale behind the high prevalence of single-bidding and negotiated procedures without prior publication. It provides an empirical analysis of competition, using procurement data and several variables. It also provides recommendations for potential improvements to the institutional and regulatory frameworks to foster competition in Slovenia. Finally, it provides …

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The impact of emergencies on corruption risks: Italian natural disasters and public procurement

Fazekas, Mihály; Nishchal, Shrey & Soreide, Tina (2025) The impact of emergencies on corruption risks: Italian natural disasters and public procurement. Regulation & Governance.

 

Theory and case studies suggest that emergencies and disasters increase corruption, especially in public procurement, hampering relief and reconstruction efforts. Despite a growing interest in the topic, including in research, there is still little systematic evidence about these effects, their structure and trajectories. We set out to investigate the medium-term impact of disasters on corruption …

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