SUMMARY OF THE ACTION

Whistleblower protection and open data are unanimously recognised as key measures to deter and detect corruption in public procurement. This project will assess the current implementation and impact of these measures in seven Member States (Austria, Estonia, France, Ireland, Italy, Romania, and Slovenia) in order to develop an ICT tool for the public administrations (from local authorities to public companies).
The long-term objective is to increase transparency and integrity in public procurement that contributes obtaining more efficient public expenditure, higher quality of goods, services and public work and more trust in government from the citizens.
After reviewing the legislation and policy on whistleblower and open data in the seven partner countries, the main activities of the project are: 1) an assessment of the implementation of the two measures, by identifying how they are applied and how they function, their strengths and shortcoming; 2) an assessment of the impact of these measures, by highlighting if, how and how much they are contributing to enhance transparent and integrity in public procurement; 3) the development of an assessment model grounded on the result of the two previous activities; 4) the development of an ICT tool that allows the public administration to assess their policy on whistleblowing and open data.
The direct/medium-term beneficiaries of the results of the project are the public administrations that could apply the ICT tool to self-evaluate their policies. The project will also contribute increasing in the public administration a culture of openness and integrity. Specific attention will be paid to citizens as long-term beneficiaries of the project not only because they will benefit from a more accountable public administration but also because they would be involved in contributing to this accountability through a more aware approach to open data and transparency in the public administration.

CONTEXT OF THE ACTION AND NEEDS ANALYSIS

This project focuses on whistleblowing legislation and open-data policy in public procurement.
It develops an impact assessment model on the basis of data collected from seven Member States (MSs). The model will be then operationalised in an ICT-tool for the public administrations to assess their whistleblowing/open data policy.
Although the EU (as it would be clarified in the following lines), international institutions (OECD, Council of Europe) and NGOs at local and global level have recognised whistleblower protection and open data as key tools to address corruption and malpractices, there has been no assessment of the impact of these measures adopted by Member States or by EU Agencies and institutions. Thi project wants to fill in this gap.
On3 October 2017, the European Commission Communication ‘Making Public Procurement work in and for Europe’ COM (2017) 572 has identified 1) the availability of better and more accessible data, and 2) the establishment of an effective reporting mechanism able to protect whistleblowers (WBs) against retaliation as two main means to reach transparency and integrity in public procurement.
The complexity of the modern public or private organizations makes crucial to develop a climate of openness and integrity to address corruption. Open data and citizen engagement are a way to contribute to enhancing a culture of accountability and transparency; whistleblower protection is crucial to encourage the reporting of misconducts, frauds or corruption.
EU is making several efforts to ensure data freely available for use and re-use, and this also includes public procurement. Open data are perceived as a tool to foster citizen participation and increase transparency of government. In public procurement, in particular, the new Directives on public procurement have introduced e-Procurement as mandatory by 2018 also to allow for the integration of data-based approaches at various stages of the procurement process. Recently the H2020 Digiwhist project has promoted Opentender.eu, a tool that publishes tender data from 33 jurisdictions (28 Member States, Norway, The EU institutions, Iceland, Switzerland, Georgia). On a broader level, the Open Contracting Partnership has developed the Open Contract Data Standard (OCDS). Among the Member States analysed in the project, the French government commits itself to use this standard in its Open Government Action plan and is implementing the OCDS in a pilot in Bretagne. Also, Italy has since 2010 a National Database on Public Contracts (NDPC) developed by the Authority for the Supervision of Public Contracts (now Anti-Corruption Authority).
EU is assessing the need, legal feasibility and scope for horizontal or further actions to strengthen the protection of whistleblowers. A public consultation has been carried out between March and May 2017 to collect views on whistleblower protection at EU and national level. Almost 6,000 people responded and showed strong support for the establishment of legally binding minimum standards on whistleblower protection in EU law. In July 2017, a study estimating the economic benefits of whistleblower protection in public procurement carried out by Milieu Ltd. for the European Commission affirmed that the potential benefits of effective whistleblower protection for the EU in public procurement range between 5,8 to 9,6 billion each year. Some Member States (Romania and Ireland among the countries analysed in this project) have self-standing legislation; others have provisions to protect whistleblower in other laws (Austria, France, Italy, Estonia).
This project intends to address the need for assessing the impact of whistleblower legislation and open data policy on local public procurement in order to improve the Member States and EU policies on the issue.