Public procurement should be all about people. It’s a means to an end, not an end in itself.
Public contracts matter.
One in every three dollars spent by government is on a contract with a company. Public contracting is the world’s largest marketplace, covering $13 trillion of spending every year.
Given its scope and scale, procurement has a vast, untapped potential to address many of the most significant challenges facing our world. Yet, too many governments don’t seem to know what they are buying and selling, for how much, when and with whom they are dealing. And it’s government’s number one corruption risk.
Open contracting can change all this. We can transform how business is done by engaging stakeholders across government, business and civil society to collaborate on reforms, engage users, respond to feedback and to create open data & tools to drive systematic change.
A modern economy needs public procurement as a smart, user-friendly, digital public service. We bring governments, businesses, and citizens together to build one.
Open contracting is about publishing and using open, accessible and timely information on public contracting to engage citizens and businesses to fix problems and deliver results.
Our services
Lift
Learn more about our Lift impact accelerator.
Evidence
Open contracting works.
Publishing data
Build skills to evaluate, analyze, and use open contracting data in a variety of different ways.
Advocacy support
Explore our advocacy toolkit including strategies, ready-to-use templates, and more.
Open contracting impact stories and case studies
It takes hard work, political will, technical skills, and sustained engagement to transform public procurement. Explore stories by open contracting champions worldwide that show how open contracting is having an impact on communities and the planet.
How we bring assistance together for partners to achieve change on the ground
We help our partners identify and collaborate with stakeholders to articulate their goals and develop implementation plans – from strengthening democratic institutions to expanding economic inclusion or strengthening sustainability and climate resilience.
We help our partners identify and collaborate with stakeholders to articulate their goals as well as develop implementation plans. Goals can include topics such as strengthening democratic institutions, expanding economic inclusion, or strengthening sustainability and climate resilience.
These goals are articulated as locally-owned measurable outcomes, such as lowering the cost for essential medicines, reducing carbon dioxide emissions, or increasing the participation of local minority-owned businesses. We also help reformers develop robust change management plans, advise on policy and regulatory reform, and help develop monitoring, evaluation, and learning plans.
We help our partners build coalitions of change and make the case for open contracting, and we communicate their story to build buy-in and show that change is possible. This can include co-developing advocacy strategies to overcome vested interests or protect progress during political transitions, elevating champions through our communications efforts, developing resources to help them make the case for change, and providing light support to civil society and journalists to investigate challenges with current procurement systems and document the impact of successful interventions to keep the pressure for reform alive.
We support partners to improve data collection, validation, publication and usability to achieve their objectives. This work can include supporting implementation of the Open Contracting Data Standard. In many places around the world, procurement information is still on paper, in spreadsheets, or poorly structured in various databases. We want to help our partners have information that is accurate, timely, and actionable so we can answer who bought what, from whom, for how much, when, and how. We support data use through capacity building and developing or adopting software solutions, such as business intelligence tools, dashboards to monitor red flags, or tools using non-procurement data to inform procurement decision-making. We also want to help our partners assess and realize the potential of artificial intelligence for better contracting. Under this strategy, we are particularly interested in building tools and systems together with our partners and supporting e-GP transformation.
Get started implementing open contracting
Browse our practical tools, resources and guidance on implementing open contracting to get better reforms that stick. Learn how you can make your data user-friendly with tools such as the Open Contracting Data Standard.
