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Confronting e-procurement corruption through open data

Indonesia Corruption Watch

“In 2014, there were 629 corruption cases with 1,328 graft suspects and the total state loss was about $ 414 million.” — Lais Abid, Indonesian Corruption Watch

293,692

number of government tenders analysed on www.opentender.net

73,378

visits to the opentender.net website in 2014

Start date
June 2014
End date
May 2016
Period: 24 months

Issue

The Indonesian government is attempting to make its government spending more open and accountable by using a public e-Procurement system, through which procurement process for the majority of government contracts are accessible online.

With the increased international profile brought by its ambitious Open Government Partnership commitments, and as a leading technology hub for South-East Asia, Indonesia’s government has an opportunity to lead the way in procurement transparency in the region – but only if the information published is actually being used to independently monitor the process.

Project

Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) is expanding its e-Procurement Potential Fraud Analysis Programme to address this challenge. ICW analyses national procurement data and posts its findings on a public website, which is proving to be a powerful tool for tracking irregularities and ensuring that publicly accessible data translates into public understanding of government spending.

The scale up of the programme includes supporting Civil Society Organisations, media, government inspectors and procurement officers to make use of the website for investigations of potential fraud in procurement processes.

The project is a unique example of how opening up data can involve multiple actors in monitoring and motivating for more effective governance.

Partner

Since 1998, Indonesia Corruption Watch has worked on a broad scale of activities promoting clean bureaucracy, politics and economic systems. Following a pilot project, which established good relations with the Procurement Policy Office and identified corruption in Aceh and Blitar, the opentender.net website was established, and helped provide the foundation for their constructive government/civil society relationship.