Publishing Procurement Information (MK0127)

Possibility for publishing basic information on public procurements on institutions’ websites (contracting authorities in public procurement)
Start and end date of the commitment: August 2018 – August 2020
Lead implementing agency: Ministry of Finance
Description of commitment
Status quo or problem addressed by the commitment
The basic data on public procurements implemented by institutions in the country are currently available only on the Electronic System for Public Procurement (ESPP), which is a platform for the actual implementation of procurement, where state institutions are the main stakeholders (as contracting authorities) and companies (as economic operators). The ESPP, and thus the basic data on citizens' money spending through public procurements, remain difficult to access for the wider mass of citizens and other interested parties, since the basic function of ESPP is not transparency and informing the citizens, but implementation of tenders. In this way, citizens, unlike other countries, do not have a quick, simple, easy and understandable insight into the way public money is spent. In a survey conducted by the Center for Civil Communications in 2017, 94% of 400 respondents across the country said they do not have enough information about the way institutions spend public money through tenders. The dominant part of the respondents (98%) answered that the information they now have about these spending is received through the institutions' websites and the media. Hence, it is necessary for institutions to publish more information regarding these spending on their websites, such as places where citizens are most often looking for and expecting to receive this information. The fast, easy, simple and understandable availability of this information for citizens will enable accountability of the institutions, increase their responsibility in public spending, and enable citizens to understand how and for what their money is spent and influence on the use of public funds for their needs.
Main objective
The aim is for citizens to have quick, easy, simple and understandable access to information regarding the way institutions spend money through 28 public procurement (about 1 billion euros per year), so that institutions will publish this information on their websites, which, in turn, are the first point that citizens access when they want to be informed about a specific institution. This will contribute to greater accountability and responsibility of the institutions when spending public money, greater information for the citizens and more efficient use of public funds.
Brief description of the commitment
The Public Procurement Bureau should recommend to all contracting authorities in the country that conduct public procurement pursuant to the Law on Public Procurement and who are registered on the ESPP, to publish them on their websites (or if they do not have their own website – on the website of the institution under whose jurisdiction it operates) the following, basic data on public procurements (independently or as a link to the already published ESPP documents), as follows: annual public procurement plan with amendments and supplements, public procurement calls, notifications for concluded contact on public procurement, notifications for realized public procurement contracts and concluded public procurement contracts. More precisely, these are already existing documents that are published on ESPP, which, in turn, is primarily a portal for actual implementation of public procurements, and whose users are the contracting authorities and the companies, i.e. the economic operators. By publication of these documents on their websites, they ensure greater transparency, and therefore accountability and responsibility of the institutions that spend public money and easier insight into that spending for those whose money are spend, that is, the citizens. Hence, the commitment envisages simple publication of these documents on the institution’s websites as a link that will lead to the already published documents on the ESPP, thus the entire publication procedure will be quick, short and simple and will not require more specific computer skills. Availability of 100% of the basic public procurement data of the institutions on their websites (or on the websites of the institutions under whose jurisdiction they operate) from January 1st 2019 onwards, which will contribute to increasing the integrity and more efficient use of public goods.
OGP challenge addressed by the commitment
- Increasing public integrity
- More efficient public resource management
Additional information
Relation to Goal 17, "Partnership for Objectives" Target 17.1: Increase mobilization (collection) of domestic resources, especialy through international support for developing countries to improve the domestic capacity for collecting taxes and other income and Goal 16, "Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions" Target 16.6: Develop effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels. This commitment contributes to improving institutions’ transparency and accountability in public finance management through greater transparency and accountability in the management of public money.
Milestone
3.2.1 Increasing the number of institutions using the possibility of automatic downloading of the data from the ESPP in order to publish the annual public procurement plans (and their amendments), the public procurement notices, the contract notice and the concluded contracts, on their websites, continuously, as these documents are published on the ESPP.
3.2.2 Increasing the number of institutions that use the possibility of automatic download of the data from the ESPP in order to publish the notice for the realized agreement on their websites, continuously, as the notice is published on the ESPP.
Contact information
Name of responsible person from implementing agency
Aleksandar Argirovski
Title, Department
State Advisor, Public Procurement Bureau
Phone and e-mail
02 3255 – 692, aleksandara@bjn.gov.mk
Other actors involved
Public Procurement Bureau Ministry of Finance Contracting authorities registered on ESPP
Center for civil communications German Filkov, gfilkov@ccc.org.mk

Theme III: Fiscal Transparency

3.2. Possibility for publishing basic information on public procurements on institutions’ websites (contracting authorities in public procurement)

Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan: [44]

The Public Procurement Bureau should recommend to all contracting authorities in the country that conduct public procurement pursuant to the Law on Public Procurement and who are registered on the ESPP, to publish them on their websites (or if they do not have their own website – on the website of the institution under whose jurisdiction it operates) the following, basic data on public procurements (independently or as a link to the already published ESPP documents), as follows: annual public procurement plan with amendments and supplements, public procurement calls, notifications for concluded contact on public procurement, notifications for realized public procurement contracts and concluded public procurement contracts.

More precisely, these are already existing documents that are published on ESPP, which, in turn, is primarily a portal for actual implementation of public procurements, and whose users are the contracting authorities and the companies, i.e. the economic operators. By publication of these documents on their websites, they ensure greater transparency, and therefore accountability and responsibility of the institutions that spend public money and easier insight into that spending for those whose money are spend, that is, the citizens.

Hence, the commitment envisages simple publication of these documents on the institution’s websites as a link that will lead to the already published documents on the ESPP, thus the entire publication procedure will be quick, short and simple and will not require more specific computer skills. Availability of 100% of the basic public procurement data of the institutions on their websites (or on the websites of the institutions under whose jurisdiction they operate) from January 1st 2019 onwards, which will contribute to increasing the integrity and more efficient use of public goods.

Milestones:

3.2.1 Increasing the number of institutions using the possibility of automatic downloading of the data from the ESPP in order to publish the annual public procurement plans (and their amendments), the public procurement notices, the contract notice and the concluded contracts, on their websites, continuously, as these documents are published on the ESPP.

3.2.2 Increasing the number of institutions that use the possibility of automatic download of the data from the ESPP in order to publish the notice for the realized agreement on their websites, continuously, as the notice is published on the ESPP.

Start Date: August 2018

End Date: August 2020

Context and Objectives

This commitment continues from Commitment 5.3 in North Macedonia’s previous action plan (2016-2018) where the government aimed to legally require contracting authorities to publish information regarding public procurement contracts. [45] The government adopted the corresponding Law on Public Procurement in January 2019 (after the end of the previous plan period), which entered into effect on 1 April 2019. [46]

The Public Procurement Bureau (PPB) maintains an Electronic System for Public Procurement (ESPP) which provides basic procurement data. Pursuant to the amended Law on Public Procurement, contracting authorities are now required to publish to ESPP notices and tender documents, public procurement annual plans, and data on fulfillment of the contracts. [47] Under the commitment in the current action plan, PPB would recommend that all contracting authorities registered on ESPP also publish the same procurement information on their own websites (or, if they do not have their own website, on the website of the institution under whose jurisdiction it operates). The milestones call for increasing the number of contracting authorities that publish on their own websites annual public procurement plans (and their amendments), public procurement notices, and the contract notice, as well as the concluded and realized contracts. The commitment is relevant to the OGP value of access to information, and the milestones are verifiable. One can verify that a greater number of contracting authorities are publishing the aforementioned procurement data from ESPP to their websites.

Implementation of the amended Law on Public Procurement should increase the amount of publicly available information around procurement. For example, the previous Law did not require the publication of public procurement annual plans, and in 2018, only about 10 percent of contracting authorities published them voluntarily. [48] According to research by the EU and the OECD from May 2019, a total of 1,435 contracting authorities are already registered in the ESPP, which organized 21,962 procurement procedures in 2018. [49] These authorities will now be required to publish the annual procurement plans, along with other basic information, to ESPP. All information on ESPP is available without registration, except for tenders with ongoing time limits for bid submissions, which become available after the time limit for bid submissions expires. [50]

Increasing the number of contracting authorities that publish data from ESPP to their individual websites could theoretically increase the accessibility of this information. However, this commitment does not call for the publication of new information to these websites that would not have already been published to ESPP. Furthermore, the wording of the commitment is somewhat limited because it calls for PPB to “recommend” that all contracting authorities publish the ESPP information to their own websites, as opposed to requiring them to do so. Therefore, this commitment will likely represent a positive but ultimately minor improvement to the status quo.

Next steps

In the implementation of this commitment, the relevant government authorities and PPB could consider specifying the regularity of the data to be published by the procuring authorities.

Given the importance of transparency of public procurement in combating corruption, the government should consider including a more ambitious commitment in this area in the next action plan. A significant reform would entail publishing procurement data in open data format covering all five contracting stages from planning to implementation, per the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS).

[44] The texts for all the commitments are an abridged version of the commitment texts. For the full commitment texts, see the Republic of North Macedonia 2018-2020 National Action Plan, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Macedonia_Action-Plan_2018-2020_EN.pdf

[45] Macedonia End-of-Term Report, p 46, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Macedonia_End-of-Term_Report_2016-2018_EN.pdf

[46] Shadow report on public procurements in North Macedonia 2019, http://www.ccc.org.mk/images/stories/sren.pdf

[47] Sigma, The Principles of Public Administration, North Macedonia 2019, p 20, http://www.sigmaweb.org/publications/Monitoring-Report-2019-North-Macedonia.pdf

[48] Ibid., p 25.

[49] Ibid., p 27.

[50] Information provided to the IRM by MISA during the pre-publication review period of this report, 6 April 2020.

Commitment 3.2 Basic information on public procurement on institutions’ websites

Substantial:

In June 2018, the Public Procurement Bureau (PPB) upgraded the Electronic System for Public Procurement (ESPP) to enable automatic publication of announcements for public procurement contracts on the webpages of public institutions. [42] This allows institutions to automatically include information from the ESPP on their calls for public procurement and on their reports on public procurement contracts concluded on their webpages in an automated manner and updated daily. [43] In addition, as per the 2019 Law on Public Procurement, article 41, public procurement calls over certain values as prescribed in article 40 of the same law, are to be published on the ESPP. However, the government’s self-assessment report does not provide information on how many institutions are now using this option for updating public procurement data on their webpages.

To implement the provisions in the Law on Public Procurement, [44] PPB upgraded the system to allow automatic publishing of public procurement plans, including amendments and automatic publication of the reports on public procurement contracts realized. [45] According to the self-assessment report, PPB sent a circular letter to institutions with information regarding these upgrades, and details on how to incorporate the upgrades on their webpages. [46] However, the report does not mention how many institutions have incorporated the upgrades. According to a shadow report published in December 2020 by the Center for Civil Communications, transparency of public procurement remains a concern and public institutions only publish around 50 percent of the information that they are required to make publicly available. [47] The new Law on Public Procurement incorporated provisions for increasing transparency and accountability, but these changes have not been implemented as intended, which questions their actual role in ensuring effective and efficient public procurements. [48] According to the same report, while the criteria for awarding public procurement changed with the introduction of the new law, in practice 97 percent of public procurements have been awarded based only on one criterion – lowest price, which was the main criterion for awarding public procurement in the old law. [49]