Reports

The Corruption Cost Tracker: Quantifying the costs of corrupt contracting and the savings to be made from reform

Fazekas, M., Dávid-Barrett, E., Abdou, A., Basdevant, O.  (2020). The Corruption Cost Tracker: Quantifying the costs of corrupt contracting and the savings to be made from reform. GTI-R/2020:02, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.

Public procurement constitutes about one-third of government spending or 13 trillion USD per year. It is highly vulnerable to corruption with estimates of losses amounting to 10-20%. Corruption in public procurement can lead to: 1) Overpriced public procurement contracts contributing to larger budget deficits. 2) Unfinished, sub-standard delivery …

Read More

India’s Federal Procurement Data Infrastructure: Observations and Recommendations

Adam, I., Tóth, B., Dávid-Barret, E., Fazekas, M. (2020). India’s Federal Procurement Data Infrastructure: Observations and Recommendations. GTI-R/2020:1, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.

Improving transparency in public procurement, that is publishing more and better-quality data, supports accountability by enabling greater scrutiny over processes and outcomes as well as helping to achieve greater competition and better value for money. In India, according to the Ministry of Finance General Financial Rules (2017), all procuring authorities are responsible and accountable for ensuring transparency, fairness, …

Read More

Why is collecting and analysing data about public procurement so damned difficult? Data scientists explain some common problems

David-Barrett, E. (2019). Why is collecting and analysing data about public procurement so damned difficult? Data scientists explain some common problems. Originally published on the ACE-Global Integrity blog: https://ace.globalintegrity.org/dataexplainer/

Open data is often lauded as a magic pill for anti-corruption: reveal what’s going on, inform the public, and, presto, government will become more accountable. Oh, and big data just means bigger gains, right?

Not quite. We have written elsewhere about the institutional and political challenges that can hinder the transparency …

Read More

Single bidding and non-competitive tendering procedures in EU co-funded projects

Fazekas, M. (2019). Single bidding and non-competitive tendering procedures in EU co-funded projects. Brussels: European Commission Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy.

Transparency, efficiency and competition in public procurement are essential for ensuring sound investments resulting in concrete benefits for both businesses and citizens. The 7th Cohesion Report pointed out that open and transparent public procurement is essential to promote development and reward the most efficient firms. However, the use of open procedures, the intensity of competition and the …

Read More

Analytics for Integrity: Enhancing Integrity Risk Assessments through Data-Driven Approaches

OECD (2019). Analytics for Integrity: Enhancing Integrity Risk Assessments through Data-Driven Approaches. Available at: https://www1.oecd.org/gov/ethics/analytics-for-integrity.pdf

Effective risk management in infrastructure projects relies on strategic and robust risk assessments in order for managers to identify risks and adapt controls to mitigating them. Risk assessments are often qualitative, relying on observations of employees and experts involved in the projects. To complement these perception-based approaches, those responsible for managing risks in infrastructure—project managers, procurement officials and risk managers—can take advantage of data analytics …

Read More

Objective corruption risk indicators that use donor project and contract data

Fazekas, M. & Márk, L. (2017). Objective corruption risk indicators using donor project and contract data. GTI-R/2017:02, Budapest, Government Transparency Institute, September 2017.

To validate our red flags we use macro level perception-based indicators and test if these move together with the country-level averages of our red flags. We also try to find testable micro level relationships either on contract- or project-level data and check if different red flags are consistent with each other. The three donors largely differ in

…

Read More

Proxy indicators for the corrupt misuse of corporations

Mihály Fazekas, Bence Tóth (2016): Proxy indicators for the corrupt misuse of corporations. U4 Brief 2017:6. 

Mihály Fazekas and Bence Tóth’s corruption proxy challenge paper has been published on U4 Anticorruption Resoure Center’ website here: http://www.u4.no/publications/proxy-indicators-for-the-corrupt-misuse-of-corporations/

 

We need more imaginative ways of addressing corruption. It is important to generate indicators that development agencies can use. U4 and DFID developed a proxy challenge competition to inspire the research community to develop reliable, intuitive, accessible and cost-effective assessment methods that are …

Read More

Assessing Tanzania’s National Procurement Data Infrastructure

Czibik Á, Dávid-Barrett E, Fazekas M, Parsons D, Stern D, Stern R and Szendrői B (2017): Tanzania’s Procurement Data Infrastructure: Observations and Recommendations. GTI-R/2017:01, Budapest, Government Transparency Institute, May 2017

The publication of data about government procurement is widely perceived to be beneficial in terms of improving transparency over a significant area of public spending. Transparency in public procurement is associated with greater scrutiny over processes and outcomes, helping to improve accountability in order to achieve enhanced competition, better value …

Read More

Assessing the potential for detecting collusion in Swedish public procurement

Mihály Fazekas, Bence Tóth (2016): Assessing the potential for detecting collusion in Swedish public procurement. Swedish Competition Authority Commissioned Research Reports 2016:3, Oktober 2016. 

Download the report: pdf

This research report provides a detailed discussion of three fundamental topics relevant for building a public procurement system in Sweden which supports both government accountability, and monitoring the risks of collusion. First, it offers a comparison of the current Swedish data system to a set of European best practices in terms of …

Read More

DIGIWHIST policy recommendations: Towards More Transparent and Efficient Contracting in the European Union

Mara Mendes, Mihály Fazekas (2017): Towards More Transparent and Efficient Contracting – Public Procurement in the European Union. DIGIWHIST publications. March 2017. 

URL: https://opentender.eu/blog/2017-03-towards-more-transparency/

Approximately 15% of the EU’s Gross Domestic Product is spent every year on procuring goods and services, and some estimates indicate that corruption increases the cost of government contracts by 20 – 25%. It is even more worrying that corruption in public procurement compromises widely supported public goals, such as building safe highways, high quality school …

Read More