[open-government] Sunlight Transparency Case Study: Public Procurement in the Philippines

Mon Oct 7 22:27:48 UTC 2013

***apologies for cross posting feel free to distribute widely***
*
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Case Study: Public Procurement in the
Philippines<http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/10/07/case-study-public-procurement-in-the-philippines/>

At the Sunlight Foundation we have been working on a set of Transparency
Case Studies <http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/casestudies>, looking at
the impact of technology enabled transparency policy around the world.

I wanted to share our second procurement case study, which we have just
published: Public Procurement in the
Philippines<http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/10/07/case-study-public-procurement-in-the-philippines/>
.

Check out the rest of the case, and listen to all of the interviews and
other supporting material in the full piece, here: *
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/10/07/case-study-public-procurement-in-the-philippines/
*

Stay tuned for our forthcoming procurement cases as well, which focus on Tamil
Nadu, India Public Procurement; Sydney, Australia Public Procurement.

The introduction is reprinted below:
Introduction

For our Philippine case study, we conducted interviews with members of the
following groups: staff at transparency NGOs, journalists who have covered
procurement, and member organizations representing business interests. Our
conversations with these respondents have allowed us to develop a diverse
and comprehensive picture of how transparency, information communication
technology (ICT) and civil society engagement in public procurement has
impacted accountability.

These conversations have provided us with a detailed picture of procurement
disclosure and data use in the Philippines since the reforms in 2002. A few
findings have become clear:

   - For transparency and public oversight mechanisms to work, public data
   must be public in more than name only. Publishing information online is not
   enough, especially if it is trapped in a platform that limits how
   journalists and watchdogs are able to use the data. PhilGEPS data is not
   widely used by journalists or CSOs because of artificial and needless
   barriers to use.
   - Monitoring this volume of proceedings requires the scale and
   efficiency of data backed analysis. There are thousands of procurement
   proceedings every year in the Philippines. For example, as of Sept. 20th,
   2013, PhilGEPS <http://www.philgeps.gov.ph/>, the government
   e-procurement platform, lists 12,346 active opportunities. The civil sector
   doesn’t have the capacity to monitor procurement at this scale simply by
   attending the Bid and Awards Committee (BAC) meetings for each one, as the
   law allows.
   - Without a comprehensive right to information law, access to useful
   data is largely at the discretion of the procurement entity and varies
   greatly between procuring entities, depending on the informal trust-based
   relationships that CSOs have developed with officials.
   - Philippine law splits jurisdiction over procurement monitoring,
   investigation and sanctioning between various agencies, which can leave
   misconduct and inefficiency unchecked.

Public procurement in the Philippines presents a salient example of how
much the specifics of implementation can matter. If transparency is to
enable public oversight, disclosure must meet certain conditions of
accessibility and usability. Simply posting information online is not
enough. For real transparency, data must be open to the public without
gates, it must be published in open and machine-readable formats, and it
must be available in bulk.

In mandating the use of ICTs in the procurement process and establishing a
formal oversight role for civil society the Government Procurement Reform
Act took important steps to reform the Philippine procurement system. These
reforms, however, have been considered and implemented largely in
isolation, to the detriment of procurement integrity. Civil society
oversight through the observer system is a manual and resource-intensive
task that doesn’t capitalize on the economies of scale and efficiencies
that ICTs can enable. Conversely, the integration of ICTs into public
procurement has proceeded largely without including CSOs in the process or
considering their needs and uses. Nowhere is this more evident than in the
limited feature set of the PhilGEPS system.

Joining the dual accountability mandates of ICT enabled transparency and
civil society oversight would make both more effective. Technical platform
features should be designed with civil society, media, and oversight use
cases in mind. Civil society organizations can serve their mandated roles
as observers more effectively – and within their resource constraints – if
data about all stages of the procurement process is made available. The
Philippines case demonstrates that, absent accessible data, whistleblowers
and leaks are the only safeguard against corruption. When the data is not
readily available, it can’t enable meaningful oversight.

-- 
Alexander Furnas
Research Fellow | Sunlight Foundation <http://sunlightfoundation.com>
@AlexanderFurnas
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