[open-government] Global Campaign for Opening Up Contract Data

Thu Jun 19 20:17:42 UTC 2014

Hey,

my name is Daniela - I joined Open Knowledge Central in February and before
this I have been working for 11 years in Brazil.

Open Knowledge wants to run a Global Campaign for opening up contract data?
I think this topic very exciting:

While I was in Brazil I encountered a lot of problems to opening up
contract data - for instance I was working with community leaders in a slum
in São Paulo and they were receiving funds from the City of São Paulo, the
Federal government and the World Bank to install water sanitation. The
community leaders reported that the work was to be done in the whole slum
but the construction company didn't do it ... They also reported that the
government send a person to evaluate and supervise the work but that the
supervision had not been done properly - on the day of the evaluation the
company showed the work in some parts of the slum where it had been
delivered. They got the approval that the work had been finalized although
the work wasn't finished.
Then I made Freedom of Information requests to get access to the contract -
the problem was, that the tender had been handled by a Ministry and then
the contract was administered by a state bank. The Ministry was not in
possession of the contract and the bank informed that the whole process was
bank secret.

I wanted to know, whether any of you has also tried to open up contract
data so far and which process you followed. Has it been successful?

I also wondered how we could organize a Global Campaign that forces a lot
of political leaders to open up the contract data. This would be so
important, to my mind: If people had the terms of reference and the
contracts they could effectively monitor the work that is being delivered
by the companies.

I have currently only found a data base of Open Contracts for Slovakia
<http://www.opengovguide.com/country-examples/in-slovakia-government-contracts-are-published-online/>
- do you know any other examples?

Thanks for your ideas!

Daniela

-- 

Daniela Mattern

Open Data Project Manager | skype: e1aste2000

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