In this series of articles we provide an insight in the biggest online tendering issues. We see a positive trend: an incremental increase in international governments and governmental bodies that publish their tenders online. However there is a big downside to it, as these governments provide their information with their own specific systematics, file structure and user interface. We also observe a second negative trend: public procurement data becomes increasingly more scattered throughout the internet. These two trends make it very difficult for companies that are searching for the right public tenders.
In this article we will discuss the absence of governmental accountability regarding public tenders.
Absence of governmental accountability
In this series we have seen that renewed fragmentation of the availability of online public tender sources is taking place, which causes a lack of transparency and which puts small, medium and micro companies at a disadvantage when trying to bid for public contracts. A third flaw in online public procurement, presents itself in the fact that higher (online) fragmentation of tenders will also lead to less transparency and accountability of governmental spending. As governmental institution in most cases are obliged to publish their tender decisions, so which supplier was selected to do what for how much, they publish decisions on their own national tendering platform. These award notices are scattered throughout the on- and offline world, which makes this information hard to find and verifiable by NGOs, journalists, other researchers, curious citizens and of course market competitors. Sometimes the information is even published behind a payment wall. What kind of financial accountability and transparency is that? This is exactly the reason why the Tender-it team has decided to also provide more transparency to that side of the market, by introducing www.opentenders.eu, a platform that uses the same sources as tender-it.com and will provide insights in to which private organisation has won which public contract. More specifically it answers the question: where do public institutions spent their budget on. The three flaws in online public tendering discussed are scientifically proven (e.g. by Harvard) to lead to the rise of the society deadweight loss of tax spending. In other words: is tax money well spent and does your government get the best bang for their (or your) buck? So what can be done about this difficult situation? And shouldn’t the Internet be the place that makes tendering more transparent, simple and easy to access? Absolutely, but just not in the way it is been done now with a nationally focused approach.
Tender-it.com
The three flaws have inspired the Tender-it.com team to actually do something about in. We are developing our technology to use the strength of the internet to bundle all online tendering platforms worldwide. It is the place to go to, to actually find and win public tenders globally. The team is continuously adding new tender sources and platforms, which we make searchable online in an intelligent way and manageable via our tender management dashboard. Please do check it out under: www.tender-it.com and let us know what you think of it. If you’re interested in finding information about winners of public procurement, or want to investigate and compare tender winning information, our opentenders.eu project supported by the SIDN-fund might be of your interest.
Tender-it - FIND.IT.WIN.IT
