2021 Open Contracting Champion: Nurida Baizakova

What does changing the status quo in public procurement mean to you?

In my opinion, changing the status quo in the public procurement system means real action in creating an open, transparent, fair, effective, and sustainable electronic public procurement system—integrated with other information resources, which is attractive to business, with a simple reporting mechanism, where every interested person can get data.

What is the #1 question you would ask before trying to reform a public procurement system?

What are the goals of reform, the benefits, and the risks? What are the experiences of other countries on the road to reform with similar goals? How can best practices be adapted to the national public procurement system? What is not working in the national system based on monitoring, analysis, and research?

 What is one thing you would say to an open contracting reformer who wants to break with tradition?

I would first ask them the goal of reforms and suggest analyzing the current situation and finding answers to the following questions: what is not working in the current system? Where are the issues and why are they happening?

 What is your go-to resource on public procurement?

To increase access to public procurement data, I prefer data in the OCDS format and access to a regulatory legal framework in an electronic form, or the full version of the document with the ability to download. In terms of capacity building tools, I prefer short videos.

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

In my opinion, the public procurement system is like a peacock: a very attractive system where everyone wants to get something for themselves. A developed public procurement system is like a peacock with its tail or train open, where each feather is a different sector, and the eye patterns on the feathers are the all-seeing eye of the civil sector and law enforcement. All sectors, like the feathers, are interconnected, which is very reminiscent of the picture of the integration of the public procurement portal with other information systems. A developed and open system of public procurement, like a peacock with an open tail, is very appealing to business, as all procurements are visible to all. On the contrary, an undeveloped procurement system is like a peacock with a closed tail, and is unattractive.

Find Nurida on LinkedIn.