The More the Merrier? How much information on government contracts should be published and who will use it by Gavin Hayman.
From the post:
A huge bunch of flowers to Rick Messick for his excellent post asking two key questions about open contracting. And some luxury cars, expensive seafood and a vat or two of cognac.
Our lavish offerings all come from Slovakia, where in 2013 the Government Public Procurement Office launched a new portal publishing all its government contracts. All these items were part of the excessive government contracting uncovered by journalists, civil society and activists. In the case of the flowers, teachers investigating spending at the Department of Education uncovered florists’ bills for thousands of euros. Spending on all of these has subsequently declined: a small victory for fiscal probity.
The flowers, cars, and cognac help to answer the first of two important questions that Rick posed: Will anyone look at contracting information? In the case of Slovakia, it is clear that lowering the barriers to access information did stimulate some form of response and oversight.
The second question was equally important: “How much contracting information should be disclosed?”, especially in commercially sensitive circumstances.
These are two of key questions that we have been grappling with in our strategy at the Open Contracting Partnership. We thought that we would share our latest thinking below, in a post that is a bit longer than usual. So grab a cup of tea and have a read. We’ll be definitely looking forward to your continued thoughts on these issues.
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Not a short read so do grab some coffee (outside of Europe) and settle in for a good read.
Disclosure: I’m financially interested in government disclosure in general and contracts in particular. With openness there comes more effort to conceal semantics and increase the need for topic maps to pierce the darkness.
I don’t think openness reduces the amount of fraud and misconduct in government, it only gives an alignment between citizens and the career interests of a prosecutor a sporting chance to catch someone out.
Disclosure should be as open as possible and what isn’t disclosed voluntarily, well, one hopes for brave souls who will leak the remainder.
Support disclosure of government contracts and leakers of the same.
If you need help “connecting the dots,” consider topic maps.