Powering up public contracting: your bold ideas

Our bold new vision is to make public contracting 10 times more efficient, fairer, more responsive, and accountable. But how do you achieve this transformation? That’s what we will uncover at the global summit of the Open Government Partnership in Ottawa. Join us for our “Making public procurement 10 times better” session that we are co-hosting with Transparency International’s health program.

In the lead up to the session, we asked our amazing speakers: What is your bold idea to power up & transform public contracting? Here is what they said:

Sascha Haselmayer, CEO at Citymart, USA: Let’s rethink public procurement as a way to recruit the best talent to deliver our next generation services. In public procurement, the cards are often stacked against new entrants and new ideas. Procurement can be an effective strategy to proactively find the best skills and capacity in the market, attract new and more diverse suppliers like small business, minority and women-owned businesses and startups, and make it easy, even delightful for them to work with you.

Ugochi Ekwueme, Program Associate at Reboot, Nigeria: Our innovation is to invest in low tech. Lessons have shown that for open contracting to thrive, people need access. Most public contracting in Africa is carried out in communities whose digital space is limited. To get them involved, we need to think up more low tech innovative solutions to ensure they have access to the contracting details of their community.

Walter Obita, Director of Kenya Healthcare Federation, Kenya: My idea is simple: buy local, build local. We are able to improve the distribution of medicines by changing the procurement strategies of the Kenya Medical Supply Authority.

Rafael Garcia, Open Contracting Director at the Mexico City Government, Mexico: We are betting on a new digital platform which allows citizens to monitor what is going and enables the government to refine contracting projects. In one of the biggest cities in the world, being responsive to the needs of Mexico City’s citizens demands an open, agile and flexible procurement system. Our goal is to make sure that beneficiaries, specialists, businesses and companies have the relevant information to design fair, competitive, honest, and inclusive procurement procedures, openly and transparently.

Anastasiya Kozlovtseva, Head of International Relations at TI Ukraine, Ukraine: To transform public contracting, we have to communicate to every citizen what each contract means for her: when they go to the hospital, send their kids to school or drive on a public road. Genuine public understanding and interest in the results of contracted activities will significantly raise the quality of goods and services we receive and even save lives.

Sally Hughes, Global CEO of IACCM: In an environment that is necessarily complex and often seeking solutions to unique challenges – SIMPLIFY (which does not mean “dumb down”). By simplifying and making accessible the process, document structure and content I believe that so much else will follow – transparency, diversity, inclusion, innovation, skills, capability, partnerships – a world where all public contracting delivers social and economic benefit to its citizens.”

We are inspired by these reforms and all of you! We have tried to gather and synthesize all we have learned from you over the past four years in our new strategy. We will unveil the brightest tactics to super-charge public procurement that you brought to us. Join the transformation!