Considerations for Governments Working Alongside Civil Society on Procurement Transparency and Integrity
Procurement is a critical tool for government service delivery across all sectors. It accounts for one in three dollars spent by governments and underpins the democratic covenant between decision-makers and citizens. The scale of the money and the discretion involved means that government officials are rightly expected to manage public resources prudently on behalf of the people. When citizens can see how public funds are spent, they can verify whether officials are truly acting in the public interest; if resources are misappropriated, they can hold leaders accountable.
The following considerations are based on contributions from FTI Cohort participants during a February 2023 spotlight meeting on improving integrity and trust in public procurement and implementing open and better public contracting to reduce corruption risks in procurement. The text contains limited additions from the cohort co-leads to extrapolate certain policy and technical issues and to introduce relevant statistics.
