Open contracting at the OGP Summit in Paris

Get ready for a week of open contracting en masse. We are excited to meet so many of our partners and colleagues in Paris for the Open Government Partnership Summit. This comes with a particular sense of pride as more than 15 countries have made new open contracting commitments since we last met in Mexico.

I wanted to briefly share some of what’s happening and hope you can join us.

• Monday and Tuesday, we are at the Academic Days on Open Government Issues (a.k.a Acadays) and the OGP Datacamp for data journalism.  
• We’ll of course be at the civil society day on Wednesday and curious how the Croissant Talk and Challenge Clinics go. It’s definitely a great opportunity to look at how open contracting intersects with issues such as company ownership.
• Wednesday is also when the OGP Hackathon kicks off. Update: And we’ll launch the French version of the Open Contracting Data Standard. 
• Our helpdesk team joins us for the week – a chance for you to talk through your plans for implementing the Open Contracting Data Standard. Get in touch at data@open-contracting.org
• Thursday will be a big day for open contracting. Colombia, France, Mexico, Ukraine and the UK will launch the Contracting 5, a new network to share knowledge and innovations in open contracting, following a joint commitment at the London Anti-Corruption Summit in May. Make sure you come to our panel at noon where we’ll share five recipes for progress from these innovators.
• We’ve also heard that the Open Government Awards might come with an open contracting surprise.
• Friday, 2pm, we’ll get all of our open contracting idols in the house to share stories from Buenos Aires, France,  Kenya, Nepal, Slovakia, Taiwan, Ukraine and many more.  
• And throughout the week there are a number of pitches for exciting tools on red flags from Hungary, infrastructure contracting in Italy, and a cool new dashboard built by our friends at Development Gateway to detect corruption risks.
• Of course, we’re looking forward to catching up on what all of you are doing, on land transparency, infrastructure, extractives, health, climate change, beneficial ownership, fiscal transparency, open spending and much more.

The OGP Paris Declaration is set to have a strong commitment to open contracting.

But OGP commitments alone don’t get you up the Eiffel Tower. Lots of stairs need to be climbed before you can enjoy the view. Who’s prepared to make the ascent? This is where a new study by Hivos and Article 19 will fill a gap. The research, which we’ve supervised, looks at the readiness of governments and civil society actors in 15 countries to publish and use open contracting data and documents.

Top that all off with countless coffees and un verre de champagne. What better place than Paris to celebrate a revolution in procurement!

Oh là là.