Partner spotlight
Microsoft ACTS and Open Contracting Partnership join to increase transparency with advanced data solutions
Public contracts keep our world moving forward, and ensuring the process for awarding those contracts is fair and transparent benefits us all. Microsoft believes that digital transformation through cloud-based technology solutions and partner support can empower public servants worldwide to ensure the fairness of public contracts.
One of the greatest risks associated with procurement is driven by lack of transparency and oversight. Long-standing procurement practices silo people and processes, which limits communication and collaboration, and creates a fertile environment for potential corruption.
Lack of transparency in government procurement sometimes results in difficulty identifying potential misappropriation or misuse of funds earmarked for important public programs. Bold steps must be taken.
To that end, Microsoft ACTS, our Advanced Cloud Transparency Services initiative, was developed to mobilize the power of data and technology to assist governments in accelerating transparency so they can achieve more.
Building data-driven procurement engines
A deep understanding of the value of transparency in procurement processes prompted ACTS to collaborate with the Open Contracting Partnership (OCP).
Launched in 2012, OCP is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that operates in more than 50 countries. OCP engages with governments, business, and civil society to help governments transform their public procurement processes so that they are more efficient and effective. The organization plays a leadership role in reducing procurement corruption by helping governments bring together data, reducing data silos that prevent transparency, communication, and collaboration.
With a focus on bringing governments, businesses, citizens, and open data together to build data-driven government procurement ecosystems, OCP helps governments break down silos to ensure that funds are distributed openly, fairly, and effectively on public contracts. This focus on data analytics solutions to drive procurement transparency makes OCP an ideal ally for ACTS.
Pictured above: Lindsey Marchessault, Director of Data and Engagement at OCP
Partnership is one of our important shared values. OCP views its customers as partners, while Microsoft works with professional services partners to serve customers.
This laser focus on partnership and transparency has the potential to completely transform the integrity of public procurement and dramatically reduce the potential of governments to steer contractors toward favored bidders undetected.
“We work with governments and NGOs all around the world to build more transparency, efficiency, and effectiveness into their systems,” says Lindsey Marchessault, Director of Data and Engagement at OCP. “We take an end-to-end view of the procurement process to see how we can strengthen it. We look at opportunities for corruption from planning all the way through implementation of public contracts and eliminate them from the procurement process. Addressing corruption is critical to improving public services and infrastructure and ensuring more sustainable development.”
The OCP process follows monies across the procurement workflow, from initial planning through delivery and implementation. With standardized open data at its core, automated data collection and analytics can power user-friendly tools and platforms to monitor and transform public contracting. By enabling users to easily capture and share procurement data and information, risks can be identified and elevated to trigger responses, such as canceling a suspect bid.
“Public contracting is government’s number one corruption risk,” Marchessault says. “As a result, ethical companies refuse to participate in a procurement process. By putting our heads together and thinking through how we can reform public procurement, we make the market more welcoming for principled vendors.”
Pictured above: A government procurement team working with civil society to discuss open contracting reform strategies (Image credit: Open Contracting Partnership/Georg Neumann)
Creating data standards to make transparency a best practice
ACTS and OCP came together over a shared desire to unlock the potential of data to enable oversight and curb corruption in government procurement. The Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS) is a global best practice schema and open data standard that provides a common data structure to guide governments on what information to publish at each stage of the procurement process.
“Working with Microsoft ACTS represents an excellent opportunity to advance data-driven transparency and anti-corruption strategies for government agencies worldwide,” says Georg Neumann, Head of Communications at OCP. “This collaboration will be producing open-source methodologies and solutions. The applications can tie into Microsoft tools and dashboards that many governments are already using, making it easier to interconnect with other public financial management systems. Moving forward, this can lead to significant impact.”
Pictured above: Georg Neumann, Head of Communications at OCP
Already adopted by more than 30 governments worldwide, OCDS delivers significant value to the ACTS-OCP collaboration. The open standard enables better interpretation of data by organizations, resulting in higher-quality data, better transparency, and more opportunities to spot potential corruption.
“OCP has a proven track record of developing real solutions to the problem of corruption,” says Norm Hodne, Program Director, Microsoft ACTS. “They use data to improve transparency, and we’re looking forward to working together in ways that help both ACTS and OCP find new ways to identify and stop corruption.”
Obstacles to government efforts to increase transparency and ultimately address corruption remain, but new approaches and the smart use of data are actively working to change that. Through higher-quality data, better data analysis, machine learning, and other tools, ACTS and OCP are working to forge a clear path to helping governments reduce procurement corruption.