Tag Archives: procurement

Towards Preventing Corruption During Ukraine’s Reconstruction: Bilingual Compilation of Ukrainian Procurement Laws

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Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has inflicted massive damage on the country’s infrastructure, a half trillion dollars and growing daily (here). While Ukraine’s government is just beginning the massive task of letting contracts for the reconstruction of schools, hospitals, and other public works destroyed by Russian bombs and artillery shells, reports are already circulating that corruption has infected the procurement of some large works.

Fighting corruption in procurement is about much more than tightening and strictly enforcing laws on what to buy from whom. Rules governing political contributions, gifts to officeholders, conflicts of interest and business practices that facilitate bid rigging are all part of the equation. But preventing and detecting corruption in government contracting starts with what the law does (or doesn’t) say about who makes purchasing decisions and how specifications are drawn, contractors selected, and performance assured.

The fight against corruption in Ukrainian reconstruction just got an important boost. An online data base of some 450 Ukrainian statutes and Cabinet decrees along with English summaries is now available here. Included is everything from the text of ProZorro, Ukraine’s award-winning e-procurement law to statutes on permitting and land use to detailed rules governing the construction of roads and ports. A dropdown menu allows users to search by topic – critical infrastructure, damaged property, public procurement, urban development – or hone in on a specific area such as construction standards, PPPs, or telecommunications.

The database will help frontline corruption fighters – in the Ukrainian government, civil society organizations, and those overseeing reconstruction funding – determine if procurement rules are being observed in a project. Vigorous competition for procurement contracts is perhaps the most important way to curb corruption. By offering a free guide to Ukrainian procurement law, the database reduces the cost to new or foreign firms of preparing bids, increasing the chances more companies will bid on a project and thus spurring competition.

The database is the result of a heroic, pro bono effort by a squad of multilingual lawyers at the international law firm Debevoise & Plimpton aided by Ukraine’s Institute for Legislative Ideas. It was the brainchild of Jennifer Widner, Princeton University professor and director of the University’s Innovations for Successful Societies, and Oksana Nesterenko, head of the Anticorruption Research & Education Centre at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Both provided guidance and overall direction. Worth MacMurray, president and chief executive officer of the Coalition for Integrity, oversaw Debevoise’s work on behalf of ISS. The project is part of a larger effort by ISS and ACREC to prevent corruption during Ukrainian reconstruction.

Corruption on the Northeast Corridor: Addressing Bribery in Amtrak Procurement

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Under the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), the US federal government plans to allocate upwards of $550 billion to giving America’s infrastructure a much-needed facelift. About one-fifth of these funds have been pledged for public transportation improvements. Few agencies stand to receive more money than Amtrak, which has heralded its $66 billion cash infusion as ushering in “a new era of rail.” The BIL promises to provide sufficient capital to guarantee faster and more reliable rail service in the nation’s congested Northeast Corridor. Amtrak’s track record of project mismanagement, however, raises serious questions as to whether it can execute its vision. Poor financial planning has undoubtedly contributed to Amtrak’s inability to provide service on par with its Asian and Western European counterparts. Yet there is another factor that has that has been overlooked in discussions about Amtrak’s middling quality. In recent years, the agency has been rocked by multiple bribery scandals that have inflated costs and delayed projects. For example, this past March, federal prosecutors charged a contractor with bribing an Amtrak employee to inflate the costs of repairs to Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station—a project whose costs nearly doubled before its completion. A similar corruption scheme resulted in the conviction of a Delaware-based contractor in 2021. More generally, a 2023 report from Amtrak’s internal watchdog, the Office of Inspector General (OIG), estimated that nearly 10% of all infrastructure spending by the railroad could be lost to corruption.

Given the huge infusion of federal grant money under the BIL, it is especially important that the US government gets serious right now about rooting out what appears to be an alarming culture of corruption at Amtrak: Continue reading →

Breakthrough in the Use of Artificial Intelligence to Fight Corruption

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Whatever peril or promise the future of artificial intelligence holds, Brazilian, Colombian, and Italian researchers show it is a powerful tool for targeting corruption investigations.

Each year Colombia and Italy let thousands of contracts for goods, services, and public works, and each year some percentage is awarded thanks to bribery, conflict of interest, or other corrupt behavior. Each year Brazil’s central government transfers millions of dollars to the countries’ 5,500 plus municipal governments, and each year employees of some governments steal a portion.

Corruption is discovered through audits or whistleblowing, but a significant percentage goes undetected. The work done in Brazil, Colombia, and Italy shows how AI helps governments to deploy their investigative resources to boost the odds of finding a much larger percentage.

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How Open Data Will Prevent Corruption in Ukraine Reconstruction

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Ukraine is creating the world’s most transparent system for the procurement of public works. To assure citizens and donors that the billions needed to reconstruct the nation’s infrastructure will be wisely and honestly spent, it has developed DREAM, the Digital Restoration EcoSystem for Accountable Management. DREAM will provide citizens, investors, and donors access to microlevel data on every single reconstruction project — from the initial feasibility study through the procurement process to the completion of construction.

Analysis of DREAM data will show when bills of quantity are unbalanced, when bids were likely collusively prepared, and suggest if not reveal other signs of project-level corruption.  Analysis of DREAM data across all procurements will disclose if cost estimates vary too much from the bid price and the final price, suspicious patterns in initial versus actual completion date, variation orders, or subcontracting, and similar indicators of possible weaknesses in the procurement and oversight of projects.

In a talk next week I will recommend the Ukrainian government use DREAM data to conduct the analyses listed below. Surely there are more I am missing. Comments/additions welcome.

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Prompting Procurement Law Reform: The World Bank’s Benchmarking Public Procurement Series

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No government activity is as vulnerable to corruption as public procurement. The procedures governments employ when deciding what to buy, how much of it to buy, and from whom to buy it provide countless opportunities for greedy officials and their private sector accomplices to profit at citizens’ expense. No serious effort to curb corruption can therefore avoid a careful scrub of a nation’s procurement law.

The best scrubbing tools are found in the World Bank’s series Benchmarking Public Procurement.  As the name proclaims, each report in the series provides standards against which the quality of a nation’s or even a province or local government’s procurement law can be gauged. Begun with a 2015 pilot examining public-private partnership contracts in a handful of countries, the most recent volume, published in 2020, assays the rules for letting PPPs in 140 jurisdictions and the rules in 40 for the award of infrastructure contracts from public funds (a 2017 report covers publicly-funded procurement contracts in 180).

Procurement is a devilishly complex area of policy. Untutored anticorruption advocates looking for corruption-reducing reforms can quickly find themselves stymied by the maze of rules governing procurement decisions and the status quo-bias of procurement staff and government suppliers. Benchmarking offers a way around these obstacles. A way to open a discussion about procurement policy and where laws or practices need changing between anticorruption reformers and the procurement community.

The 2020 edition examines how countries fare against standard practice on 160 plus areas. Not everyone will agree that all 160 plus benchmarks are best practice, and many will wish for explicit anticorruption benchmarks like those described here were included. But the critical step is to begin a dialogue on reforming a nation’s procurement law, and the Bank’s Benchmarking series is the best vehicle yet for sparking one. I hope a new updated and expanded edition is in the cards.

Guest Post: Anticorruption Recommendations for the Ukraine Recovery Conference

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Today’s guest post is from Gretta Fenner, Managing Director of the Basel Institute on Governance, and Andrii Borovyk, Executive Director of Transparency International Ukraine.

Today and tomorrow, delegates from around the world are gathering at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano, Switzerland, and we hope that this conference will result in firm pledges by the international community to finance Ukraine’s post-war recovery and reconstruction. But as readers of this blog are well aware, huge infusions of money into countries recovering from war or natural disasters are a tempting target for kleptocrats, organized criminal groups, and other corrupt actors. And although Ukraine has steadily strengthened its anticorruption defenses since 2014, those defenses are not yet sufficiently robust to ensure reconstruction funds are spent with integrity.

For this reason, the Basel Institute on Governance and Transparency International Ukraine are advocating that the Ukraine Recovery Conference, and any future efforts to provide reconstruction funding for Ukraine, embrace a set of anticorruption measures to be integrated into the reconstruction process. The recommended measures include, among others:

  • prioritizing the leadership selection process and reforms of Ukraine’s anticorruption institutions, including courts;
  • using transparent procurement systems, such as Ukraine’s award-winning e-procurement system Prozorro, for reconstruction projects; and
  • strengthening asset recovery systems so that money stolen through corruption in the past can be used to help fuel reconstruction efforts.

You can see the full recommendations here in English (and here in Ukrainian ), and you can also download a shorter infographic that summarizes the key points.

Hooray for Corruption (in the Russian Military)

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As I write this, the tragic unjustified conflict in Ukraine drags on, with anguishing reports of civilian casualties and needless destruction mixed with encouraging news of the valor of the Ukrainian armed forces and the resolve of the Ukrainian people and their leaders. I won’t pretend to have any idea what will happen. I’m just hoping that outnumbered the Ukrainian resistance can hold out long enough for the political and economic pressure to have some effect—if not in changing the Russian leadership’s policy, then at least in undermining its capacity to wage war or maintain a long-term occupation.

In trying to slow the Russian army’s advance and deny Russia control of major cities and other strategic targets, the Ukrainian military may have the help of an unexpected ally: corruption. The corruption, that is, of the Russian military and defense sector. Without taking anything away from the skill and bravery of the Ukrainian armed forces, many analysts have noted that the invading Russian force appears to have been hampered by cheap and poorly maintained equipment, shortages of fuel, rations, and other supplies, and deficiencies in training and coordination. And some of these analysts have suggested that while no one factor can explain Russia’s poor showing in the field (so far), pervasive corruption in the Russian defense sector may be an important contributing cause (see, for example, here, here, and here). Continue reading →

Civil Society Organizations Can Help Fight Corruption in the COVID-19 Response. But Only if Governments Let Them

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Corruption in the health sector—a longstanding problem that may cost $500 billion per year globally—has become an even more salient concern in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the virus swept the globe, many governments responded by sidestepping traditional procurement safeguards in the interest of speeding up emergency responses. While it was important to provide relief as quickly as possible, the relaxed regulations allowed corruption to thrive, leading to numerous scandals. To illustrate with just a few of the many, many possible examples: Bolivia’s Minister of Health was detained for allegedly purchasing 179 unusable ventilators at twice their original price; Indonesia’s Minister for Social Affairs was suspected of having pocketed US$1.1 million in funds relating to COVID-19 aid; and senior leaders and wealthy individuals in numerous countries, including Canada, Peru, Argentina, Spain, and Poland, jumped the queue to get access to vaccines. Much of this health sector corruption arises due to a lack of transparency and accountability in the governing systems. Especially in the midst of what seems like a never-ending pandemic, working towards combatting this type of corruption is especially salient as citizens are relying on the government for more health-related needs.

Anticorruption advocates have long argued that civil society organizations (CSOs) can and should play an important role in monitoring government activities and promoting accountability in the health context and elsewhere. A particularly encouraging example of the constructive role that CSOs can play, in the specific context of the COVID-19 response, comes from Argentina. Last year, the Argentine chapter of Transparency International, known as Poder Ciudadano, launched a COVID-19 Public Procurement Observatory, which uses open-source information to make procurement deals available to the public. Using this monitoring tool, Poder Ciudadano carried out an exhaustive survey of public purchases and contracting that took place within the COVID-19 emergency procurement framework. By December 2020, Poder Ciudadano had tracked more than seven hundred procurement activities valued at US$200 million. In addition to its work in monitoring COVID-related procurement, Poder Ciudadano worked with other CSOs to ensure transparency and equity in vaccine distribution. Using information provided by the Ministry of Health, these CSOs ensured daily publication of information about the numbers of vaccine shipments, their distribution, and who had been vaccinated. These transparency measures help prevent improper favoritism and other departures from the official vaccine distribution plan.

This example is both encouraging and instructive. The Poder Ciudadano case highlights how CSOs can be effective in promoting accountability and transparency in procurement and distribution. But this example also underscores that in order to play this role, CSOs in developing countries need outside funding, partnerships, and resources, as well as the support and cooperation of their governments. CSOs can play a vital role, but only if they have the right kind of help.

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Highway Robbery: Preventing Corruption in U.S. Infrastructure Investment

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Last November, President Biden signed into law the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), a $1.2 trillion package that earmarks $110 billion for repairing and rebuilding roads and bridges. This is the single largest investment in U.S. roads and bridges since the construction of the interstate highway system in the mid twentieth century. And though it is a federal project, much of the money will be distributed to state governments, which will determine how best to use the money to address their infrastructure needs. As state governments receive the IIJA money, we can expect the states to launch a public tender frenzy.

In all the extensive discussion and debate over the IIJA, there has been relatively little focus on the corruption risks inherent in this sort of spending program—even in an affluent, reasonably well-governed country like the United States. After all, corruption in large construction projects, and infrastructure projects like roadbuilding in particular, is all too common. Unfortunately, the IIJA’s design exacerbates rather than reduces these corruption risks. While it is too late to address those flaws in the statute, there are some measures that the federal government can and should adopt now to mitigate the inherent corruption risks. Continue reading →

Guest Post: Highlights from the UNGASS Anticorruption Session Side Events

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Last month, the UN General Assembly held its first-ever Special Session focused specifically on the fight against corruption. In addition to the UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) itself, various governments and civil society organizations arranged various side events, held in parallel with the main UNGASS meeting, to allow activists, policymakers, and researchers to share their expertise. Today’s guest post, contributed by Michaella Baker, a JD-MBA student at Northwestern University (working in collaboration with Northwestern Law Professor Juliet Sorensen), summarizes the themes and principal contributions of three of these side events.

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