Public procurement is, as the Open Contracting Partnership puts it, where taxpayers’ money gets converted into schools, roads and hospitals. Transparency International estimates the total value of public procurement spending at $9.5 trillion per year. Given its size and the amount of discretion often involved, it is not surprising that procurement is so prone to corruption risks. The OECD estimates that between 20% and 25% of procurement funding is lost to corruption in developing countries. More importantly, it is not only a matter of money, corruption in public procurement puts human lives at risk.

In an environment of scarce resources and an increasing public demand for action, managing corruption risk becomes paramount for public and multilateral agencies.

There is a myriad of indicators that attempt to measure different dimensions of corruption but few of them offer the granularity to assess corruption risks in procurement processes at an actionable level. Corruption risk management can take different forms for different institutions. Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) and national procurement agencies have a responsibility to promote transparency, ensure their funds are efficiently spent in achieving development outcomes and have systems in place to investigate and sanction corruption in projects they finance. With open electronic data on public contracts increasingly available, supported by the implementation for example of the Open Contracting Data Standard and the publication of government spending and aid data, new and innovative approaches to analyzing procurement information emerge.

This workshop will present some innovative approaches to analyzing publicly available electronic procurement data for the purpose of detecting, monitoring, and better understanding corruption risks. These approaches are supported by corruption indicators which can be used by different stakeholders to improve both efficiency and transparency in the provision of public services and goods. We will discuss how different actors can use such information to assess and mitigate corruption risks.

The open data movement is here to stay. More and more, governments commit to putting information about how they do business in the public domain. However, more information doesn’t automatically translate into more transparency and less corruption. This workshop will present innovative approaches to using procurement related information to develop actionable indicators to increase transparency in public procurement, and the ability of procurement authorities to engage other stakeholders in detecting and monitoring corruption risks. The panel will discuss the “ups and downs” of leveraging a strategy to manage corruption risks with data. By doing so, the panel hopes to connect users, researchers and producers of public procurement data with potential new partners as well as tools and indicators to fight corruption.