Reports presented by members of the Lawyers Council from 14 countries who have surveyed the landscape in each of their own countries and provided summaries of exceptional legal measures for crisis response, the conduct of procurement processes under such exceptions, and resultant corruption risks and actions to minimize such risks, including in respect of transparency obligations. This section also includes information as to initiatives developed by civil society organizations and other sectors to monitor government actions related to the pandemic, as well as public information about investigations of corruption into governmental actions related to the pandemic. Finally, the Lawyers Council presents a set of recommendations calling on the legal community to support anti-corruption efforts related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and recommendations for a critical policy focus on transparency and access to information, integrity and transparency in procurement practices, and citizen watchdogs and whistleblowers.
The primary claim of this Note is that restructuring existing political frameworks can combat procurement corruption on the local level. Specifically, this Note posits that legislative involvement in the procurement process — coupled with the addition of an independent, procurement policy board, charged with developing and reforming local procurement practices — would provide significant benefits to local procurement practices.
Morocco has been working in close co-operation with the OECD for several years as part of the Good Governance for Development in Arab Countries Initiative. The aim of this Initiative is to modernise public governance in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) through a programme divided into seven key areas: integrity and prevention of corruption in the public sector; human resource management; e-government and administrative simplification; regulatory quality; relations between national, regional and local authorities; management of public finance; public service delivery and public-private partnerships.
This Joint Learning Study addresses integrity in public procurement, following the adoption of the new regulations on public procurement by the Moroccan government in May 2007.
ADB/OECD Anti-Corruption Initiative for Asia and the Pacific
Asian-Pacific countries have made significant efforts to address weaknesses in their procurement frameworks and practices. To support these efforts and to assist the ADB/OECD Anti-Corruption Initiative’s 28 member countries in strengthening their public-procurement mechanisms, the Initiative conducted a Regional Seminar on Fighting Bribery in Public Procurement in November 2007. This volume compiles the experience that experts from Asian and Pacific countries – as well as beyond the region – shared during the seminar. It is addressed to policy makers and experts who wish to learn from other countries’ experiences in strengthening frameworks to protect public procurement from bribery and corruption risks.
Open Contracting for Health (OC4H) is a DFID-funded project which seeks to improve the transparency and accountability of public procurement in the health sector. By ensuring that the procurement of things like medical supplies and the building of health centres is conducted openly and transparently, it greatly reduces the chance of a situation like that in Aromo repeating.
In Lira County, Uganda, Transparency International Uganda has worked with and trained individuals representing three key stakeholder groups: