The OECD Global Anti-Corruption & Integrity Forum has become one of the leading public fora on integrity and anti-corruption worldwide, bringing together relevant policy communities as well as the private sector, civil society organisations and academia. This year’s motto is:

IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST:  TAKING INTEGRITY TO HIGHER STANDARDS

30 -31 March 2017, OECD Conference Centre, Paris

• Stimulate fair competition and economic growth
• Reduce the inequality gap
• Shape a level playing field for business
• Safeguard the public interest in policy making
• Promote trust in government and politics

In 2017, Lear Conference together with the Global Procurement Conference are organizing an international event: “Public Procurement Days”. During the three days, the two conferences will encourage an intensive exchange of ideas and experiences on issues of public procurement & competition policy.

Lear Conference 2017 “PUBLIC PROCUREMENT & COMPETITION POLICY” will bring together experts from a wide range of fields including academia, international organizations, law firms, public authorities and the private sector, encouraging a comprehensive debate on the current challenges related to competition in public procurement.

Among the covered topics:

Are competition policy and contracting authorities friends or foes? Which is the relationship between corruption and collusion? How to solve the problem of conflicting policy choices when tackling corruption and collusion? What are the screening tools developed to detect collusion in public procurement? How the availability of a large set of information (big data) may be exploited to enhance the reliability of these tools? Which type of circumstantial evidence can be deemed sufficient to legally prove bid-rigging? What measures can be adopted to encourage contracting authorities to seek compensation through actions for damages for the harm suffered by citizens and taxpayers?

Location

Centro Studi Americani
Via Michelangelo Caetani 32
Rome
www.centrostudiamericani.org

Meet DIGIWHIST researchers Mihály Fazekas and István János Tóth at the third session of the conference on 03.07.2017 from 15.00pm – 16.30pm and discuss with them during the Q&A after the session:

Third session – Screening tools and big data
Cartels conviction requires the collection of evidence that meets a high standard of proof. According to the EU case law, to prove an infringement the existence of an anticompetitive agreement must be the only plausible explanation of the observed behavior. Therefore, competition authorities look for documentary evidence to prove their allegations. However, firms have become very smart in concealing evidence of their misbehavior, making cartel prosecution very hard. Economics can help mitigating the problem in two ways. First, economic analysis can be used to select markets or cases in which illegal collusion is a plausible explanation of the observed outcome and participants’ conduct. These screening tools may help focusing investigations in those cases in which the actual existence of a cartel is more likely. Second, it may help collecting circumstantial evidence to be used to prove the infringement. Although this type of evidence is rarely sufficient to meet the required standard of proof, it can corroborate other pieces of evidence and contribute to a successful cartel prosecution.

The third session deals with screening tools. What are the screening tools developed in the economic literature? Are they effective? What are the risks of false positive or false negative? What is their data requirement? How the availability of a large set of information (big data) may be exploited to enhance the reliability of these tools? Who should be in charge of their use?

Speakers
Francesco Decarolis, Boston University
Mihály Fazekas, University of Cambridge
István János Tóth, Corruption Research Center Budapest (CRCB)

A Seminar on Corruption & Global Economy is  organised by the Chinese Presidency of the G20 and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on Monday, 17 October 2016 in the OECD Headquarters in Paris. This event will be followed by a two day G20 Anti Corruption Working Group (ACWG) meeting.

The purpose of the seminar is to discuss the relationship between corruption and economic growth by exploring the impact of anti-corruption policies on macro-economic performance and financial stability and its effect on sustainable and inclusive growth. It will also provide an opportunity to discuss practical experiences with implementing corruption mitigation measures and how to strengthen the evidence-base of integrity and anti-corruption policies.

The seminar hosts experts from OECD, IMF and World Bank as well as Economists & Researchers from leading Universities. Our DIGIWHIST researcher Mihaly Fazekas from the University of Cambridge will be speaking at a round table on “Strengthening the evidence-base of integrity and anticorruption policies”.

FIGHTING THE HIDDEN TARIFF: GLOBAL TRADE WITHOUT CORRUPTION

Topics:

Developing a long-term vision for clean trade
Preventing corruption in customs
Protecting your supply chain
Improving your business in emerging markets
Countering illicit trade

Integrity and Trade Track

International trade is a motor of the global economy and represents increasingly large volumes of goods, services, and financial flows. Yet, the economic benefits resulting from trade can suffer from a lack of integrity throughout the international supply chain. This can result in a substantial loss of revenue for governments, and can hamper competition and business activity. It can also entail important health and safety risks for societies. Integrity measures that protect cross-border trade not only produce advantages for the economy in general, but also for private companies, the public sector and society as a whole.

The 2016 edition of the OECD Integrity Forum will put the spotlight on this hidden tariff. It will bring stakeholders to the table to develop a long-term vision for clean trade. The Integrity Forum fosters dialogue for policy actions and cooperative integrity efforts to prevent corruption in customs and to protect supply chains. In addition, new evidence and insights will be shared for countering illicit trade.

High-level speakers will confront the issues of corruption that impact global trade, informal sessions will provide an opportunity to examine solutions in greater depth, authors, academics and students will share their findings during poster presentations, and lunch debates and roundtable discussions will give you the opportunity to share your experience directly with your peers.

Integrity Track

Recent economic, geopolitical and demographic developments have underscored the growing complexities that governments, businesses and citizens face in our increasingly globalised world. The Integrity Forum provides a platform to address the integrity dimensions of these pressing challenges.

Moreover, the Integrity Forum zooms in on new integrity instruments and responds to the growing demand for evidence-based policy recommendations.

Public money is at risk of being lost to misappropriation, fraud, and even corruption. That’s why transparency is essential. The new Red Flags project aims to enhance the transparency of public procurement in Hungary and supports the fight against corruption in public funds. It provides an interactive tool that allows the monitoring of procurement processes and their implementation by civil society, journalists and public officials to catch fraud risks.

The first session of this afternoon event will introduce K-Monitor and Transparency International Hungary’s new Red Flag project, and will include interventions from the EU Commission.

The second session will highlight other projects, including DIGIWHIST and the Integrity Pact project, which also can inspire more citizen engagement through the use of social accountability mechanisms.

You can register here

An international workshop with thought leaders and practitioners to be held in Brussels. The objective of the workshop is to discuss the study results and to develop an agenda for action for the European Commission and (other) national and international policymakers that pursue big data for policy and other data-driven approaches for evidence-informed policymaking.

Current decision making processes are far from being optimal to represent the best interests of the public and stakeholders, as contemporary policy domains are very complex, high dimensional and include a large dose of uncertainty. The massive amounts of data captured in our physical world through sensors and electronic
devices provide a huge potential to advance these processes. With the availability of new technologies, new formulations are needed on fundamental questions such as how to conduct a census, how to produce labour statistics, or how to incorporate data mined from social media and administrative operations. Efficient procedures to draw links between large scale data processing technologies and existing expert knowledge in major policy domains would potentially offer chances to make policy development processes more citizen-focused, taking into account public needs and preferences supported with actual experiences of public services. This however comes with serious privacy and security concerns as intersecting various data sources could reveal unprecedented private information. The conference committee invited contributions
covering the following topics:
• Information and evidence in digital age
• Policy-making mechanisms and modelling approaches
• Existing methodologies, case studies, best practices for use of Big Data in policy
• Data collection, storage, processing and access procedures
• Cumulative learning in digital environments, potentials in policy context, challenges and limitations
• Interaction of domain expertise with digital processing technologies; dealing with imperfect/uncertain data; psychology/behaviour of decision
• Security and privacy issues; ethics and law

The procurement function is constantly evolving, with many organisations going through significant transformations over the past decade. Now more than ever, there is a considerable emphasis on the integration phase and the focus has shifted to delivering the value proposition through collaboration and partnerships.

Focusing on the technical aspects of procurement, the Zurich Forum is the leading event for teams from around Europe to hear innovative strategies from inspiring CPO’s, participate in deep-dive roundtable discussions and network with more than 150 senior peers.

The Forum will be preceded by a Summit for 50 CPO’s or equivalent, and a practical Masterclass for the rest of the team on 13 October, to compound the value of the Forum content with further opportunities for in-depth exchange and benchmarking.

The Singapore Forum is the leading event in the Asia Pacific region where procurement professionals can hear innovative strategies from inspiring CPO’s, participate in deep-dive roundtable discussions and network with more than 150 senior peers.