CORRUPTION

International Affairs Forum Fall 2016
Hivos started the Open Contracting Data programme, launched in January of this year. It will be
implemented jointly with Article 19 and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in six countries in Latin
America, Africa, and South East Asia. This will be done in close cooperation with the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands and partners such as the Open Contracting Partnership. The
programme aims to open up public contracting by active engagement of citizens who want to monitor
public spending, so that the money is spent honestly and efficiently, following the highest standards of
transparency and integrity. As such, it is Hivos’ major programme on anti-corruption.
Two Examples
Governments use public contracting to provide vital infrastructure, goods, and services to citizens.
When schools are built badly in an earthquake zone, damage when earthquakes occur is bound
to happen. In Sichuan, China, contractors built schools to cheap and shoddy standards. In 2008,
disaster struck, the schools collapsed like “tofu”, killing over five thousand students and teachers. The
government later arrested parents for protesting, not the contractors. Public disasters like this keep
happening.
A recent investigation by Africa Uncensored unveiled a massive scandal in public procurement
of medicine and medical expenses in public health services in Kenya. Kenyans are incurring
medical expenses which are 30-300% higher than market prices due to the government’s skewed
procurement mechanism. The mechanism, known as the Market Price Index model, is not
informed by market prices. This has facilitated regular leakage of funds through purchases made at
significantly inflated prices. As a result, there have been exorbitant regional price discrepancies for
medical equipment and drugs in Nairobi, Kisumu, and Mombasa. “The pricing variations appear to
have been negotiated, and do not conform to any known pattern”, reads a recent policy brief compiled
by the Society for International Development, Transparency International-Kenya, and the Kenya
Ethical and Legal Issues Network. This is a perfect example of infomediaries using public contracting
data and documents to investigate misuse and corruption, and turn it into actionable information
that then can be used by civil society organisations, policy makers and prosecutors to fix the broken
system of public contracting. Africa Uncensored is an investigative journalism project and was one of
the core beneficiaries of the Kenya Media Programme (KMP), supported by Hivos East Africa.
Each year governments spend an estimated US $9.5 trillion worldwide in public contracting. Through
their daily activities, they accumulate enormous quantities of data. At the same time, the 2016 Open
Data Barometer found that just eight percent of countries publish open data on government contracts.
This presents high corruption risks.
By making data and information about the public contacting process more open and transparent,
governments can save tax money, make better use of the government’s financial resources (tax
payers money), deliver better goods and services to citizens, prevent corruption and fraud, and create
a better business environment to stimulate innovation. Transparent, accountable, and efficient public
spending and public contracting is not only is it an obligation towards citizens, but is in the interest of
governments to be able to effectively provide oversight about what value for money was achieved and
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