Washington, 6 September — Ten projects from Brazil, Chile, Lithuania, Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, Uganda, United Kingdom, and the United States have been selected to create fair, inclusive and greener communities by advancing procurement reforms as part of the Open Contracting Partnership’s impact accelerator program Lift. 

Each year, governments spend $13 trillion across the world on public procurement. Contracts are core to delivering public education, transportation, healthcare, and tackle climate change. Yet broken procurement systems have exacerbated inequalities and corruption.

The Lift impact accelerator supports teams from public administration and civil society to deliver transformational change that builds stronger communities for millions of people by reforming procurement through better data, open and participatory processes, and technical and financial assistance.

“We are proud to work with frontline visionaries who want to use procurement as a lever to achieve broader social impact goals,” says Kathrin Frauscher, Deputy Executive Director of the Open Contracting Partnership.

This year’s ten teams were selected from more than 150 proposals from 70 countries, an increase of 50% over the last application round. The program will kick off with a workshop in September. Each team receives up to $35,000 of financial support and 200 hours of tailored technical assistance on change management, inclusion, open contracting strategies, and more. 

Over the next 18 months, the Open Contracting Partnership will support the selected teams as they open and strengthen their procurement systems and build their capacity to deliver on their goals. 

• Brazil: Transparência Brasil and Controladoria-Geral da União aim to expand access to basic medicines through increased accountability and efficiency. 
• Chile: Fundación Observatorio del Gasto Fiscal en Chile and the Dirección General de Obras Públicas – Ministerio de Obras Públicas aim to promote environmental sustainability in public works with a more open and gender-focused approach. 
• Lithuania: the Public Procurement Office aims to increase the inclusion of people with disabilities in public procurement. 
• Philippines: the Procurement Service – Department of Budget and Management and WeSolve Foundation, Inc. aim to increase transparency and accountability around government purchases and improve value for taxpayer money.
• Senegal: the Autorité de Régulation de la Commande Publique aims to increase the inclusion of women-owned businesses in public procurement. 
• Thailand: the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration aims to strengthen the city’s resilience to flooding by increasing the efficiency, transparency, and effectiveness of its flood management infrastructure. 
• Uganda: the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority and Africa Freedom of Information Centre aim to increase the inclusion of women-owned businesses in public procurement. 
• United Kingdom: the Crown Commercial Services and PUBLIC aim to help small and medium enterprises and voluntary, community and social enterprises remain competitive as the UK transitions to more sustainable procurement.
• United States: the City of Boston aims to increase the inclusion of businesses owned by people of color and women, and strengthen buyers’ abilities to make data-informed decisions. 
• United States: the City of Portland aims to increase the inclusion of minority-owned businesses and pilot new strategies during an upcoming infrastructure opportunity.

“The solutions and approaches developed by these reform teams will provide inspiration and practical guidance that will enable others to scale innovative and impactful procurement practices,” says Kaye Sklar, Senior Program Manager of OCP’s Lift program.

Additional notes

Past Lift teams used open contracting to tackle challenges such as government transparency and accountability, medicine affordability, and disaster relief management. They achieved the following outstanding results:

• In Ecuador, the Lift impact accelerator program provided a space for civil society and government reformers to collaborate. Two years later, competition has increased, the procurement agency, SERCOP, is publishing real-time open data, and civil society is monitoring red flags, resulting in better deals for citizens.
• In Moldova, thanks to Lift, patients from some of the most vulnerable groups in society worked with public health and procurement experts to slash the cost of drugs without compromising on quality. This freed up funds for other critical preventive and curative care measures. Thanks to this collaboration, the country saved 15.4% on medical procurement overall – including 19% savings on HIV medicines.
• In Assam, India, CivicDataLab built an intelligent data model to help decision-makers improve flood management procurement so the most vulnerable people in Assam are better protected from the worst effects of natural disasters.
• Mexico City, Mexico revamped its bike share service, expanding the network while halving the operating costs. 
• The U.S. city of Des Moines, Iowa has tripled vendor registrations, increased supplier diversity, and integrated practices to foster sustainable purchasing and social equity.

Media contact

Georg Neumann, gneumann@open-contracting.org, +1-202-7144460

About

The Open Contracting Partnership is a silo-busting collaboration across governments, businesses, civil society, and technologists to open up and transform government contracting worldwide. We bring open data and open government together to make public contracting fair and effective. Spun out of the World Bank in 2015, we are now an independent not-for-profit working in over 50 countries around the world. We help make reforms stick and innovations jump scale, and foster a culture of openness about the policies, teams, tools, data, and results needed to deliver impact.