Domestic Procurement
Transparency International-USA’s (TI-USA) focus on improving the integrity and transparency of federal, state, and local public procurement systems is built around our expertise in civil society procurement monitoring, captured in our Civil Society Procurement Monitoring Tool. In addition to our procurement monitoring work, TI-USA also advocates for transparent and fair procurement processes that enable governments to provide their citizens with high quality goods, works, and services at a competitive cost.
Because there are over 87,000 local governments in addition to the 50 state governments and the federal government, it is almost impossible to know how much money is lost to procurement corruption in the United States. The federal government procures approximately $450 billion in goods, works, and services and state and local governments spend even more. Worldwide, the OECD has estimated that up to 25% of the total procurement budget is lost to corruption. So even if only 5% of US procurement budgets are lost to corruption, that still works out to tens of billions of taxpayer money. We also know that corruption on even a single procurement can cost a lot of money. For example, New York City overpaid over $600 million on a procurement for an automated payroll system because of corruption.
Our work in procurement monitoring stems from our belief that a big part of the solution to public procurement corruption lies in citizen engagement. Public procurements purchase the goods, works, and services that people use every day—schools, roads, and sanitation services are but a few of the best known examples. Because people depend on the goods, works, and services acquired through the public procurement process, they have a natural interest in seeing that procurement systems are clean and transparent.
TI-USA, together with an international team of procurement experts, developed an online tool, the Civil Society Procurement Monitoring Tool, that seeks to harness people’s natural interest in the procurements that affect their community and assist them in monitoring these procurements for signs of corruption and fraud. The Tool takes the form of an interactive checklist. This checklist facilitates the detection of common red flags of corruption, fraud, or lack of transparency in public procurement; suggests actions to take when irregularities are found; and enables the user to generate a summary report detailing all red flags uncovered. The checklist is composed of over 60 questions that proceed chronologically and cover the entire life of a public procurement, from the initial needs definition process through the final audit of the completed contract. These questions reflect international best practices in procurement. Each time the user uncovers a red flag, the Tool suggests additional avenues for investigation as well as possible avenues of recourse. More information about the Tool is available here.
In the spring of 2015, we worked with a team of students at American University’s graduate School of International Service to use the Tool to monitor procurements in the Washington, DC, metropolitan region. This work uncovered important differences in the transparency of municipalities’ procurement practices as well as their anti-corruption safeguards. More information about this project is available here.
We believe that civil society procurement monitoring will serve to not only identify and, over the long term, reduce public procurement corruption and fraud, but it will also deepen citizen participation and engagement in government as well as build the capacity of civil society to effectively monitor the management of public resources.