Open Data on Public Procurement (BA0013)

Which public issue does the obligation address? Lack of transparency in the public procurement procedures and the professional and legal implementation of public procurement procedures without the preference of bidders are the main threats to the integrity of the public procurement system in BiH. Implementation of this measure will increase transparency and enhance the responsibility of public funds management in BiH. Different groups of people and organizations can benefit from the availability of open data in public procurement. At the same time, it is difficult to precisely predict how and which value of open data will be created in the future, because the nature of the innovation is such that it comes in unexpected ways.

What is the obligation? Make all public procurement data in BiH collected through the national public procurement portal (www.ejn.gov.ba) additionally available in other formats, not only in read only format. The data available on the portal show how public funds are spent by contracting authorities at all levels of government in BiH. The data will be additionally available in Excel format for manual processing by interested individuals and organisations such as civil society organisations, journalists, academics, companies. The Agency plans through this obligation to provide data in the public part for the following larger units:
1. Data from the register of contracting authorities;
2. Data from the register of bidders (domestic and foreign);
3. Data on published notifications;
4. Data on allocations (Chapters I and V);
5. Data on allocations from annual notifications (Annex II, Part B, Framework Agreements);
6. Data on exemptions from the LPP application;
7. Auction data;

How does the obligation contribute to resolving the public issue? Open data on public procurement will enable transparent insight into the implementation of the public procurement procedures and the value of contracts awarded, which will facilitate the work of administrative inspection, audit office of the financial operations and, if necessary, prosecutors’ offices and other law enforcement authorities affecting the reduction of corruption in this area.

Why is this obligation relevant to the OGP values? It provides the public sector transparency in the area of public expenditure, which has significant impact on strengthening the integrity and responsibility of the public sector organisations.

Additional information • The obligation is planed to be implemented through the budget of the Public Procurement Agency of BiH; • The Anti-Corruption Strategy 2015-2019 and the Action Plan for Implementation of the Anti- Corruption Strategy 2015-2019 in the Chapter 9.2.5 Public Procurement and the Private Sector provide two strategic programmes relevant for this action: Continuous harmonisation of the legislative framework in the public procurement area with international obligations and standards and Improvement of the legal framework for more active participation of the private sector in anti-corruption activities. Both programmes will be actively supported through the implementation of this obligation; • Reform Agenda in BiH 2015-2018, adopted by the governments of all administrative levels in BiH, states the need to ensure transparency in the public procurement system.

Goals/activities

Development in the e-Procurement system (www.ejn.gov.ba) and release of data in the Excel format. 1 January 2023 - 31 December 2023

Action Plan Review

Commitment 6. Open data on public procurement

● Verifiable: Yes

● Does it have an open government lens? Yes

● Potential for results: Modest

Commitment 6: Open data on public procurement

Public Procurement Agency

For a complete description of the commitment, see Commitment 6 in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s 2022–2024 action plan: https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/bosnia-and-herzegovina-action-plan-2022-2024-december/.

Context and objectives

The Freedom House reported that many BiH public procurement contracts are awarded in secret, [20] while the European Commission found procurement process and contract implementation to be prone to irregularities and vulnerable to corruption. [21] Based on civil society reports, approximately 9 out of every 10 public procurement processes have corrupt elements. [22] A 2021 report by the Office for the Audit of the Institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina showed that BiH institutions did not undertake sufficient measures to establish an efficient public procurement system, therefore damaging citizens' trust in government and failing to use of taxpayers' money efficiently. [23]

With the aim of increasing transparency and reducing corruption, this commitment seeks to publish all public procurement data collected through the national public procurement portal (http://www.ejn.gov.ba) in open data format. This builds on a commitment in the previous action plan aimed at publishing all BiH public procurement data, which saw limited implementation due to lack of funding and legislative support for reform. [24] For this commitment, a Public Procurement Agency official confirmed that funding has been approved and that they are using a technical solution to overcome the legislative barriers identified in the previous cycle. [25]

Potential for results: Modest

Implementation of the commitment would increase transparency by facilitating easier access to existing procurement information, which would be proactively published in an open format. According to a Public Procurement Agency official, procurement information is highly requested by civil society, media, and international organizations. [26]

The commitment could also help to report cases of corruption or abuse in public procurement, as monitoring and watchdog organizations would find it easier to download, filter, and search procurement data. In the status quo, citizens rely on information request mechanism and manual search to extract relevant procurement data. A civil society representative said that compliance with open data format would be a step forward to simplify the process of downloading and filtering information for reuse and investigation. [27]

This commitment has modest potential for results on improving public procurement transparency. While more procurement information would be made publicly available as open data, a civil society representative shared that much of the information was already available—albeit not in open data format and/or require official information requests [28] They expressed a concern that the government will only provide information on past procurement tenders, as disclosing information of ongoing tenders would require an amendment to the Public Procurement Act. [29]

Opportunities, challenges, and recommendations during implementation

Both government and civil society stakeholders were optimistic about completing implementation of the commitment as a technical solution has been found to address the previous legislative barrier, approvals for implementation are concluded, and funding was finally approved in July 2022. [30] A civil society representative expressed concerns that the reform would reduce public access to the portal. [31] However, public officials have confirmed that this is not the case, since any currently available information will continue to be so. [32] A procurement agency official stated that the commitment would not be able to directly address questionable activities in some procedural issues that arise during electronic auctions—such as overturn of bids, rejection of offered contracts, and/or dealings between bidders. [33]

The IRM recommends implementers of this commitment to do the following:

● Ensure all data are published in accordance with the Open Contracting Data Standard. ^[34] Make data interoperable with other systems—such as government spending data—and update the portal to meet the public procurement principles included in Chapter 5 of EU acquis. The Public Procurement Agency could ensure that the published data are available in multiple formats to ease reuse and analysis by third parties. Finland’s e-procurement portal is a good example noted for its user-friendly design. [35]

● Systematically include participation by civil society organizations in commitment implementation oversight. The Public Procurement Agency could benefit from identifying and consulting stakeholders before developing the open data format to better understand user demands. They could take measures to encourage utilization of the data by establishing feedback mechanisms which give citizens an opportunity to demand action, such as through auditing, tagging system, and/or reporting via hotlines. Latvia, for example, introduced an automated tagging system of procurement process suspected of irregularity. [36] In Ukraine, the Dozorro mechanism created a community of active citizens and watchdogs to monitor procurement contracts and processes. [37] In Italy, OpenCoesione provides citizens with similar oversight and monitoring platform. [38]

● Set long-term ambition for this policy area to allow information of ongoing tenders to be made available in open format. Although the commitment seeks to enhance transparency of completed procurement processes, long-term goals could enhance transparency of the contracting process through real-time publication of information. This may require a considering amendments to the Public Procurement Act.