Reports

Assessing the potential for detecting collusion in Swedish public procurement

Ágnes Czibik

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. 

URL: http://www.konkurrensverket.se/globalassets/publikationer/uppdragsforskning/forsk_rapport_2016-3.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 public procurement data scope, depth, and quality using data collected by the EU-funded DIGIWHIST research project. Second, it provides an assessment of …

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

Ágnes Czibik

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 buildings, or delivering medicine in time. These are a few of the main reasons why more research needs to be …

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Universalistic rules-particularistic implementation: The EU’s single market for government purchases

Lili Mark

Fazekas, M and Skohrovec, J (2016). Universalistic rules – particularistic implementation: The EU’s single market for government purchases. GTI-R/2016:01, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.

Open and fair access to government contracts has been a long-standing principle in many international trade agreements including the one on the EU’s single public procurement market which is probably the most extensive among them with its long standing common regulatory and enforcement framework. However, the ostensibly low prevalence of cross-border trade in European public procurement represents a troubling puzzle: only about 5% of procurement contracts are awarded to non-domestic suppliers. This is in strike contrast with …

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How to Construct a Public Procurement Database from Administrative Records? – Technical Report

Ágnes Czibik

Czibik, Á. – Fazekas, M. – Tóth, B. (2015): How to Construct a Public Procurement Database from Administrative Records? GTI-R/2015:02, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.

This report aims to provide a comprehensive outline of the potential challenges of building a database from publicly available public procurement records and the possible solutions to the identified problems. We use Hungary as an illustrative example as most problems faced in other countries are present there, and so any finding will be widely applicable. The chapters introduce 1) the process of public procurement and the publicly available announcements in Hungary; 2) the administrative processes which …

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Corruption Risks in UK Public Procurement and New Anti-Corruption Tools

Ágnes Czibik

Mihály Fazekas – Elizabeth Dávid-Barrett (2015): Corruption Risks in UK Public Procurement and New Anti-Corruption Tools. GTI-R/2015:01, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.

The UK government has taken a number of important steps to ensure that public procurement is conducted to the highest standards, and to make procurement markets more competitive. The work of the Crown Commercial Service has substantially professionalised public procurement while reforms to rules around open data have made the UK government one of the most transparent in the world.  This paper does not seek to detract from those initiatives, but rather makes the case for reflecting on the …

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