Open Data across the Public Procurement Cycle (MD0080)

Problem description Over the last few years, transparency and access to public procurement data have improved over the last few years, mainly due to the development of the new MTender e-procurement system. However, not all public procurement data is currently accessible to the general public and civil society for monitoring and tracking how authorities spend public money. At the same time, the lack of detailed open data at all stages of the procurement process, and, in particular, at the contract implementation stage, prevents the development of evidence-based public policies. According to the MAPS report for the assessment of the World Bank’s procurement system, one of the main problems lies in the limited availability of detailed and reliable data that would allow civil society and competent authorities to take action to analyse how public procurement is conducted and, therefore, to determine ways to improve the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of procurement procedures. Currently, the public has access to limited data regarding the contracting stage. Thus, there is no data on the contracting stage, including invoices, payments and data that would allow the evaluation of the effectiveness of the 33 procurement process by comparing the planned value with the contracted value and the value actually paid from public budgets. The electronic procurement system is not fully developed, which does not allow accessing data on procurement contracts. The only available data (contract value, contracting parties, additional agreements) regarding procurement contracts are reported by the authorities to the Public Procurement Agency which processes them manually and publishes them on the institutional web page. Although a number of data and documents are available in the electronic procurement system in automatically processable formats, not all of them are usable and reusable data.

Description of the commitment:

(a) what the commitment entails Evaluation and/or monitoring of the implementation of the actions from Objective 2 of the plan on implementing the Programme on Development of Public Procurements System 2023-2026, approved by Government Decision no. 625/2023, in order to ensure the opening of open data for the entire procurement cycle.

b) what are the expected results Ensuring the opening of essential data from the public procurement process, especially at the stage of execution of procurement contracts, a fact that would allow the evaluation of the effectiveness of the use of public money by the contracting authorities.

c) major objective Ensuring citizens’ open access to complete and current data on goods, services and works procured through the public procurement system.

Activities | Responsible PA/Partner | Duration of action | Indicator

6.7.1. Ensuring public access to open data on low-value procurement and inclusion thereof in official procurement statistics. | Ministry of Finance, Public Procurement Agency | 2023- 2025 | Official statistics contain the data on purchases of low value

6.7.2. Organisation of training sessions for procurement specialists and members of working groups within contracting authorities on the need to ensure open access to procurement data, publishing and reporting of data on procurements conducted and contracts executed. | Public Procurement Agency, Civil society (A.O. IDIS Viitorul, A.O. AGER) | 2023- 2025 | 4 trainings conducted