Monitoring abuse of public funds by state-owned companies during electoral periods

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AIS has started working on the implementation of the “Monitoring Abuse of Public Funds by State-Owned Companies during Electoral Periods” project. The project consists of election oversight on monitoring abuse of state resources, and is supported by the USAID program, “Accelerated Civic Development and Cooperation”. The goal of this project is to educate and empower citizens through information and transparency about state-owned companies’ potential abuse (misuse) of their money, assets and human resources during 2019 Elections and It will contribute to reducing electoral corruptions, ensure accountability of the public companies and their good governance.

 

Transparency, Monitoring and Evaluation of Procurement of Central Purchasing Agency

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The project entitled “Transparency, Monitoring and Evaluation of Procurement of Central Purchasing Agency” aims at disclosing data regarding procurement and contracts signed by this newly established agency. For that, a data catalogue shall be developed containing data concerning all the tenders carried out by the Central Purchasing Agency (CPA) for its two first years. Transparency, Monitoring, and Evaluation shall be done using Open Contracting Standards, which are not currently used by the Government Procurement System in Albania. A well-structured database to evaluate performance and identify risk of corruption shall be created, containing data that are easy to find and use regarding CPA tenders for 2018-2019. Every procurement shall be automatically scanned for risk of corruption, and identified by RedFlag markers.

Evaluation: Activities and Objectives are relevant to the anti-corruption strategy. The project delivers results for two years of CPA public tender, evaluates its performance, quality of tenders, measures integrity and efficiency indicators. This project strengthens the culture of monitoring and evaluation, and identifies potential risk of problems with the quality of competition.

Beneficiaries: citizens, media, actors engaged in anti-corruption, non-public sector (accountability) and the public sector (good governance). 

Project Justification:

Council of Ministers Decision No.81/2018 led to the establishment of a Central Purchasing Agency in line with the objectives of the Anti-Corruption Strategy, responsible for procurement on behalf of ministries, agencies, and executive authorities. There is a need to monitor and evaluate its performance for the first months, especially before and during the 2019 elections, with a view to identifying potential risk of public contracts being used for electoral influence.

Open ICT Education for youth employability

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Open Data Kosova (ODK) and the Albanian Institute of Science (AIS) are implementing the Open ICT Education for Youth Employability Project. This is an EU-funded IPA cross-border project. Its beneficiaries include Universities and secondary schools in the Republic of Kosovo and the Republic of Albania. The objective of the project is to foster youth employability providing an open access to critical ICT knowledge and skills, and strengthening cross-border cooperation between the educational institutions. The first online ICT platform is created through this project in the Albanian language.

Transparency in Health Engagement Project

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Transparency in Health Engagement Project is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the terms of its Contract.

Agreement Number: Contract Number: AID-182-C-17-00001 (USAID/Transparency in Health Engagement Project held by prime recipient University Research Company, LLC (URC) and by sub-recipient Albania Institute of Science (AIS), Tetra Tech, and Boston University.

The Transparency in Health Engagement project is funded and managed by the USAID/Albania.

Notifications and publications related with the engagement in this Project :

 

Open Government against Corruption – Open Gov for Good Governance

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The Project Open Government against Corruption – Open Gov for Good Governance aims at implementing an activity on citizens’ participation in the process of ensuring information, control, and monitoring of local government spending and budgets. Another objective of the project is also to enhance the capacity of journalists, municipality councillors, and officials in using ICT instruments for transparency and accountability. The project is being implemented in three municipalities of Elbasan region, Cërrik, Belsh Përrenjas Availability of information instruments and enhanced capacities of the main stakeholders contributes to increasing citizens’ participation in decision-making, and makes institutions more accountable.

Visualizations and linked data on spending and budgets of each of the three municipalities shall be created and be made accessible through applications in the Open Government against Corruption Project. Thus, the intention is to create an application called “How does the Municipality spend my money”, of one stop integrate data source categories for expenditures on public works; expenditures on public services; expenditures on the municipality staff; clients contracted by the municipality; incomes from the use of Municipality-owned territories. The data include details like time, descriptions, beneficiaries, and descriptions of expenditures following the Open Data Principles.

The “Open Government against Corruption – Open Gov for Good Governance” project is supported by the “Anticorruption and Capacity Development” sub-grant fund within the EU-funded CIVILISC project, implemented by IDM in partnership with the RiskMonitor Foundation, Bulgaria

Monitor Municipality Clients in Public Contracts

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Monitor private contractors in public contracts. This is the newest AIS project, which has just started. Its aim is to identify the people, being granted a public contract, names of shareholders and owners, their records of public contracts, characteristics of the relevant companies, and any potential conflicts of interest. The project is supported by LëvizAlbania Local Democracy in Action program financed by the Swiss Development and Cooperation Agency. Databases of private contractors for public services, works, and investments are going to be published by March 2017.

Public Health Sector Procurements

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The Public Health Sector Procurements Project has enabled the creation, promotion, and use of a well-structured database, which serves as an instrument (tool) for transparency, information, citizens’ monitoring about procurement processes of the Public Health Sector for 2016. The database contains well-structured data, updated in real time[1] and filters for ensuring user friendly information. It serves as an instrument for anti-corruption. Fact-based journalism and fact-base public debate is the final purpose of the creation of the well-structured database. It provides exhaustive information about every public procurement process in the health sector, and every public health policy-making and service institution, including the Institute for Health Insurance as an institution responsible for the obligatory public insurance scheme. Procurement processes of all kinds and values shall be controllable by the public in real time and in compliance with open contracting data standard

The objective of this project is to establish a platform that makes the public tenders and procurement contracts of the public health sector (institutions) open and easily monitor-able by citizens. The platform allows the citizens to observe which high-value services, works, or public purchases are being contracted, as well as monitor aggregated amounts of money allocated to public health programs. These data are interlinked with the Open Corporate Albania, creating a complete profile for each company that serves as an online Corporate Passport. The proposed platform and the dissemination activities around it shed the missing light on the procurement procedures and tenders, which are directly related to the citizens’ quality of life and health services for citizens.

Donator :  US Embassy through the Democracy Commission Small Grants Program

[1] Open tender, calls for proposals, direct negotiations, public-private partnership procurement, consultations, and auctions for the period 1 January – 30 December 2016

Electoral Room for Electoral Reform – a lobbying project, an initiative of the civil society

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AIS is now engaged in a new lobbying project in favor of as fair Electoral Code as possible. The name of the project is ‘The Electoral Room for Reform’, and it is an initiative of five organizations, supported by the Open Society Foundation for Albania OSFA.

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Money Government & Politics

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Money, Government and Politics project and its activities address issues of abuse, corruption, and conflict of interest in the context of governance and politics in Albania. The program opens up and well-structures data about the wealth of high state officials, and expenditures of state institutions, concessionary corporates, and electoral spending.This process enables to track cases of nepotism, embezzlement, and conflict of interest. Access to such data increases transparency, accountability and public pressure in cases of favoritism, and embezzlement of public funds or assets.

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Spending Transparency for Municipalities

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Open Governance – Good Governance

USAID/Albania and PLGP, in collaboration with the Albanian Institute of Science (AIS), has launched an “Open Governance as Good Governance” initiative. This initiative will draw upon the AIS project experience to make model municipalities’ budgets more transparent by publishing municipal finance information using an Open Data format.

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