WP4. Transparency Tools Development

The objective of Work Package 4, led by the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany, is to develop tools which help increase public spending transparency and efficiency. Those tools shall help relevant stakeholders such as journalists, government officials, private companies and civil society to be able to monitor public procurement legislation and processes, to report abuses of power, and assess risks at an early stage.

Hence, the following tools will be developed as part of this WP:

• national procurement portals and mobile apps:

OKFDE will design a generic public procurement and make it available at the national level. Users will be able to perform three main functions:

1) download the database and documentation including all indicators that DIGIWHIST has developed,
2) search and use online analytics (eg. individual tenders, issuers, or winners), and
3) contribute to the data themselves.

Public procurement tendering information will also be cross-referenced to the relevant bits of transparency legislation data collected in WP1. Data visualisation will make the site both appealing and informative.

• a European transparency legislation observatory:

HSOG is responsible for creating and deploying a web portal dedicated to country-level data and indicators on transparency legislation across Europe. Here, the World Bank’s Public Accountability Mechanisms web portal serve as a benchmark for data structure and cross-referencing. Similar to the national public procurement portals, the transparency observatory web portal will 1) make the underlying data downloadable and 2) allow users to search and analyse data online.

• an easy-to-use risk assessment software:

UCSC will create an easy-to-use software for public authorities which can assist them in assessing the corruption risks in their public procurement procedures. The software will directly utilize the data and indicators generated by the project while also allowing for the inclusion of other indicators which are accessible for the procuring authority but not to the public.

In order for this WP to be successful, we aim to provide a two-way process where the project provides crucial inputs, but stakeholders bring their own strengths and needs to the table. In this vein, we will actively strive to link our quantitative data and indicators to solid local knowledge and civil society experience to create an effective feedback mechanism, ensuring the transparency tools are useful and useable.