Open Contracting Champion 2022: Laya Madduri

What is the most important role open contracting plays in the fight against corruption?

Open contracting helps in increasing visibility to public contracts carried out across the board. This will ensure a level playing field, provide opportunities, and ensure the procurement of high-quality of goods and services.

Transparency and accountability are just the means to an end. In your work, what are the most important end goals? How can reducing corruption risk create better social, economic, or environmental outcomes?

Since I am working with the Finance Department, the end goal of our work is efficient utilization of public funds. By bringing in transparency and accountability in the procurement processes, we strive to accomplish building world-class infrastructure, providing services to the public in an efficient manner, contributing to inclusive growth, and at last achieving the sustainable development goals.

What has been your proudest moment or achievement in building accountability or transparency into government?

I am proud of my present role as the second appellate authority for the appeals filed under the Assam Public Procurement Act for the State of Assam. Although the appeals started getting filed only recently, I think this is a great responsibility and I feel honoured to be trusted with this.

If public procurement was an animal, which one do you think it would be and why?

I think I would like to compare public procurement with Ikran—the imaginary fauna of Avatar. The reason is, if you know how to ride it, you can accomplish a lot of things, but if you are scared and do not know how to handle it, it can hurt you!