 All right, thank you everyone for coming out so early on the second day of a conference. That's no easy task So I really appreciate it. I notice everyone is a little bit sleepy So we're gonna do something to wake up just a little bit and so I can kind of get a feel of the room So we're gonna do something called hands up and hands down So hands up is if you agree 100% with your hands with your hands and hands down is if you 100% Disagree with whatever I'm going to say to you. So here I understand public procurement and what it is hands up if you completely wow You can be in the middle so you can be anywhere between here and there so totally agreed looks like a lot of people know a lot about procurement How about this my government uses my money well hands up or hands down. Oh That's sad Okay, what about this there is a lot of corruption in my country hands up or cans down There's a lot of corruption in my country Middle middle the high good So it seems like a lot of people already know about open contracting and public procurement which is great So today I'm going to talk a little bit about what I've learned over the last two years working as our monitoring evaluation and research lead at open contracting partnership So when we talk about public contracting what we're really talking about is how government spends your money So that's on everything from bridges and schools to roads and airports It really touches every single aspect of your day So we often talk about very nebulous terms like value for money and market opportunity But I want us really to think as we're going through this exercise, which is not presenting I don't know if we can change it as we're going through this exercise about these are things that really affect us on a Data-day level. There are things that touch us every single day It's not some nebulous thing that's out in the aether. It's really the goods and services that our government provides for us every single day Thank you so much. So with that, I'm going to start with the takeaways So there's a lot of details in this presentation But I want you to just come away with three things from what I'm talking about The first is that when we're able to unite data civic tech in civil society and public participation We can track how our government spends our money and really change the way that spending works The second is that we do see results of open contracting both qualitative and quantitative from a lot of places and the three places I'll talk about today are Colombia, Paraguay, and Ukraine and It's not work. That's easy There are a lot of challenges and some of the main challenges that we've seen over the last two years are Identifying use cases or how exactly you're going to use open contracting in your community Promoting cultural shifts within organizations is really tough and data quality remains a challenge So why is open contracting important to begin with? We all know that it has to do with the goods and services we touch But what kind of scale are we talking about here? So public procurement is a nine and a half trillion dollar a year enterprise We spend nine and a half trillion dollars a year globally on public contracting So that's about fifteen percent of our global GDP is spent on contracting and right now We're estimated to lose about 20 to 25 percent of that budget just to corruption alone Not even just misuse of funds just corruption 20 to 25 percent of our spending on public procurement So sit with that number for a second think about what we can do in our communities with 25 percent more of nine and a half trillion dollars And you'll really see the value of opening up this information and getting citizen voices into how government is spending So open contracting has kind of two main tenements. It's about opening up information and data about public procurement And it's also about defending the rights of citizens and the private sector to have a voice in how government spends So how do we do this and you'll see throughout the presentation there are some links up here in blue So the presentations will be sent out and there's a lot more information in those links Which I won't cover today, but if you're interested later, that's where all of the extra information is So there are a couple of different ways that we work that are probably most relevant to this group So the first is that we work in a cross-sectoral way Which means that we want governments talking to civil society private sector Journalists academia in addition to other stakeholder groups to make sure that everyone has a voice in how the money is spent and how data are opened up So that means a high level of CSO and civic tech participation in this process on the technical front We maintain an open contracting data standard And so we provide technical support to countries who want to turn their maybe closed data or semi open data into a totally open International format and we also provide tools for analyzing those data So a big part of the work that we do then is working both in governments And then with people outside of government to build up their capacity and their data literacy from making use of that data The main goal really of opening up data isn't just transparency for transparency's sake It's making sure that whatever is published is actually used and it's really useful for people who want to do analyses about how their government is spending So we do work with data use My job particularly is focusing on monitoring and evaluation. So we're a very small team We're 12 people right now But we have actually two people that are dedicating most of their time just to monitoring our results and knowing if what we're doing is effective and a couple of different aspects of that are impact analyses and then global research that we do in partnership with other organizations So I'm gonna talk about three different cases today and again, I don't want to focus just on the big numbers here I want to focus on the human aspect of it because open contracting isn't just about data data is a big part of it But it's really about human stories So I want to talk about the case of Colombia and if anyone knows Bogota It's a city with extremely high poverty levels. So a lot of children eat their main meal at schools every single day But with about 700 schools in the area and a daily population of about 9 million in Bogota And one of the worst traffic congestion problems in the world the logistics of getting that food to the schools It's really really difficult. And so for a number of reasons The about 18% of the contracts for school meals were provided via sole sourcing Which essentially means that the government picked a provider for those school meals They didn't have any competition for that contract and the providers named their price and the meals went into the schools And you can see why that's a problem where there's no competition prices are going to be driven up It's not fair contracting processes and as a result of that and the corruption that runs really rampant in Colombia We saw for example chicken prices at about four times the market value and last year alone There were 30 million meals that weren't delivered to schools. So to put that on a human aspect That's 30,000 30 million times that a child in Bogota wasn't able to eat lunch because of either Ineffective or corrupt procurement practices. So this really does have an impact on our day-to-day lives So what did we do for solving this problem? We worked across sectors, but particularly with Columbia Compreficiente, who's the main procurement agency in Colombia Political advocacy to get open contracting on the agenda User needs workshops to understand what the different types of needs were across each sector and to be able to open up data That they would need to do their work better There was a large amount of technical work of getting the Colombian data into the international Format and a bit more friendly for the end user Later we did private sector consultations to know why some of the main food companies in Colombia weren't participating in the public procurement market And what we found out there is that firms were worried about a couple of different things They were worried about corruption and they didn't want to have to deal with the corruption that exists in Colombia Public procurement they didn't know how they would handle the volume of meals So they were concerned about volume and also about the bureaucracy that public procurement entails So one thing we were able to push was for the establishment of framework agreements Which is kind of a technical procurement term But it essentially it provided an extra level of security for firms who wanted to enter into public procurement for the first time And we were able to diversify the market of suppliers for these school meals Also data use events most recently we had an event for open day today in Colombia where we had actors from across society but really mostly from civil society come in and use the data Around school meals to find innovative solutions to getting better quality meals into schools So what are some of the outcomes of this first? We saw a better dialogue between the government who's the publisher of that data and then all of the end users across the Public sector side the private sector civil society academic etc. Better quality data So there's more data now and it's a lot easier to use the first-time participation of recognized companies so we have more firms that are competing in the same market and Colombia a contraficiente actually formed a business consortium of about 347 partners just to monitor the quantity and the quality of these school meals, which is really great And so what are the results that we've seen in the long term of this? The first is that Colombia a contraficiente thanks to their open data was able to expose a price fixing scheme That was increasing prices by about 45 percent So on the right we see a table that talks about the prices of fruits So CCE is the buying agency in Colombia and then there are the providers and these were the prices that were being quoted So for example for one banana the price quarter was about 141 pesos Which is about five cents and the providers were asking for 300 so a double in the price we see the same for red apples for mangoes and for pears as well and Thanks to exposing this price fixing scheme. They've seen savings is about 10 to 15 percent on school meals Which means cheaper meals and more meals for kids and so now the hundred and thirty million dollars that spent annually on a public public school meals is now allocated to 54 companies instead of just 12 so there's a lot more diversity in the market Which is great for businesses, especially small businesses, and it's also great for the kids who get the meals We get better meals for less money and that's amazing and 14 of those firms are actually new first-time firms that are entering into the market and As a result of that we now see about seven hundred thousand quality meals served daily in Bogota, which is really exciting progress So I want to take it down one more notch Just to look at what open contracting actually looks like when we're at the implementation level So I've talked about the results and everything seems great, but what are the activities that lead up to that? So I'm just gonna give an example for every case I talk about one thing we did in Colombia was this user needs assessment Which is actually very similar to what Joyce had mentioned about the data user story activity So essentially getting stakeholders from across different sectors to talk openly about what their realities are what their data needs are And what kind of things they were trying to achieve So what we were able to do was match up the intended impacts that they wanted to see with concrete data fields that they would need To be able to meet those meet those goals and then from there We mapped out all of those data needs to what's already available in the Columbia Compeficiente portal and saw where the data gaps are Then we took a step back as our organization had conversations with the technical teams at Columbia Compa to make sure that those data were prioritized for publication So by the way is actually quite a similar case To Columbia in that the thing the the main scandal that really put Open contracting on the forefront had to do with schools So I want you to take a look at this and imagine this is filled with maté maté is a type of tea That's very very popular in a lot of South American countries every day average teeth. Does anyone drink maté? How much would you pay for one liter of maté? Shout out. How much would you pay for this? dollar about a dollar All right This was costing and by the way last year 14 dollars Governments were spending 14 dollars on one liter of maté And in a country where in the capital the average salary is 356 dollars This was a gross misuse of funds and everyone knew it There was um, there were a lot of other types of issues going on with contracting around the time But that was really the story that broke through and people got upset and they wanted to do something about it There was actually a really big open data movement in by the way before this There was an active civil society who knew a lot about the theories of open data But didn't necessarily know how to use data and that's where our data literacy training came in So we worked on capacity development both within government and then with civil society to make sure that the data published in the portal by the bariwine procurement authority the dncp were actually used We also had technical consultations across sectors to understand what their needs were and what kind of Portal updates or visualizations they would need to be able to do their work better And we held a series of hackathons And as a result of all of this bariwine was able to make some changes to its portal including some revisions to the the way they were displaying infographics and Interactive graphs on their website, which made it a lot easier to use a lot more friendly They installed a book download feature an api output, which is really helpful for anyone who wants to do mass data analysis What were the outcomes of this? First we saw that the portal visits went up by about a third more citizens were participating in the procurement conversation And there was an increase in the number of suppliers in bariwine with 21 000 now registered And in a country where the population is only six and a half million That's a really significant amount of suppliers in the system So to give a concrete example of kind of what this looks like in the oh, sorry Let's talk first about results. So the long term results. So this resulted in an increase In savings to about 1.4 percent, which again for a small country with a small gdp is really significant And amendments on all contracts which are a prime source of corruption in a lot of countries dropped from 19 of all contracts to 3 of all contracts So, um, let me give kind of a concrete example of what this looks like in the field So this is an analysis that's done by reaction or reaction Which is a leading civil society group in bariwine And what they looked at was the spending at different schools So they wanted to see if the schools that were receiving the most public funds were actually the ones that were most in need And the results were really interesting So they found that half of the schools that had the most spending weren't even on land that pertained to the ministry of education So they shouldn't have had any public spending to begin with so that was a clear red flag Later they found that only one school that was actually the most in need was receiving the most money And to give kind of a technical view of why this is important why it's important to open up data The analysis that was done two years ago required about $2,600 and eight months of work But after the open data movement in bariwine that opened up the contracting data They only needed about $200 and two weeks of work to be able to complete the exact same analysis So to move on to Ukraine our final example This one is a little more geared towards the private sector, which doesn't necessarily speak as much to this room But private sector is a really big part of open contracting So before the 2014 revolution, Ukraine was one of the most corrupt countries on earth About 20 of public spending was being lost just to corruption And so to give a couple examples of what that looked like there were benches that were being constructed in the metros that were Costing about the same as the average Ukrainian car So it was just shocking the amount of miss spending and mismanagement of funds in this country So a very dedicated group of unpaid volunteers started up a movement called prozoro, which means transparency in Ukrainian And they worked hard to make sure that all of the public contracts were displayed on one portal in one site in a downloadable easy to use format And the pilot of this was actually so successful that two years later in 2016 the Ukrainian parliament voted to Make all contracts mandatory to be published on the prozoro website, which is now the main portal for Any public contracting in Ukraine? So the portal has a couple of different features the first is a business intelligence tool for analyzing tender data Which is really useful for first-time bidders and SMEs who want to get into the market and want to know what a good tender Looks like so they can win contracts with government There is also a complaint mechanisms for bidders Which is hosted on a separate portal, which is called duzoro, which is a feedback portal And it essentially allows anyone within a contracting process So that could be a member of the public or a firm to submit a complaint about how a public contract is run If they see a sign of corruption To make it as user-friendly as possible the prozoro team also developed an informational portal with training guides about how to use and analyze the data And so in total all of this results in a monitoring platform for buyers and sellers to rate their experiences and to be able to submit complaints So the very short term outcomes of this were that the prozoro inquiries the google inquiries went from 680 to 191 thousand in just one year As of today there are 15 000 buyers and 47 000 suppliers registered in the system And public bodies and state-owned enterprises are able to monitor procurement and the feedback on tenders in one central place That's very easy to use So what are the results? So we have the prozoro platform, which is where the contracts and the final Any amendments are listed and then the duzoro platform, which is the feedback mechanism So in the prozoro platform The average number of suppliers per contracting agency went up from nine and a half to 11 and a half essentially So that would mean for example that the ministry of education used to have an average of nine suppliers And now they have an average of 11 which is really great progress and it shows a diversification of that market And interestingly about 80 percent of those are now sms, which is great for for small business growth in ukraine On a user surveys 72 percent said prozoro reduces corruption in ukraine and about 80 percent said the procurement has improved with prozoro On the duzoro side of things the the kind of complaints platform Users flagged 5 000 tenders just in the first six months of those 50 percent 50 percent were resolved satisfactorily And as a result of that 50 percent 200 tenders were revised 22 criminal charges were pressed and 79 sanctions were issued So the public is very active in monitoring public procurement. They are now empowered to Submit complaints and say when something seems off Um, so a concrete activity related to this ukrainian work is the development of a monitoring and evaluation framework So as our organization we have frameworks in a couple of different countries and ukraine is our most developed one Um, we had our baselines taken in 2015 and we do annual progress reports to track how things are going And among the indicators which were decided upon based on consultations not only with the public sector, but also private sector and cso's We have information around policy changes data quality Engagement and feedback so it'll be things like feedback loops or how citizens are engaging with government And the hard results of business opportunities. So that would be market opportunity value for money and integrity within the country So i'm going to leave it there. There's a lot of extra information I can go into and i'm happy to discuss at any point today I want to leave with a couple of things This is not easy work. It's really satisfying work Because it does touch every aspect of what we use in terms of public services every day But it's tough and a couple of the really difficult things that we battle are identifying the use case past transparency for transparency So a lot of governments that come to us that want help publishing their data Want to do it because it's international recognition or they're trying to comply with some kind of commitment that they've made But they don't really think past that and as a result the data usually don't tend to be the best quality It's not necessarily an invalid use case to want to do transparency for transparency's sake, but it definitely doesn't lead to the most successful implementations Promoting a culture of cooperation and monitoring within organizations is tough We always have champions in our organizations and the governments that we work with who are fighting the good fight But there are a lot of institutional barriers that are pressing back against those champions at all times And at an organizational level, it's really hard to Get them on board with the idea of monitoring the results and having staff members take accountability for what they do The last challenge is data quality and completeness So this is in some ways related to identifying the use case and not really having a clear idea of why we're doing open contracting it's also related to lack of technical capacity at a lot of these organizations and government agencies Is that they just really don't know what to do with the data Which means that the data don't tend to be the best quality or they're not updated regularly or they're not in a format That's really useful for the end user So i'm going to leave it there. I just want you to remember that public procurement touches every aspect of life If you took a train into the conference center this morning if you took a car and you went along a public road That's public contracting and action right there So it's really our responsibility as members of this community to demand data And to be more proactive in asking for publications pushing our governments for publication of more and better procurement data And that's it