Whistleblowing open data impact. An implementation and impact assessment - WOODIe

This project focuses on whistleblowing legislation and open-data policy in public procurement. Its long-term objective is to increase transparency and integrity in public procurement that contributes to obtaining more efficient public expenditure, higher quality of goods, services, public work, and more trust in government from the citizens. The EU, international institutions (OECD, Council of Europe) and NGOs at the local and global level have recognised whistleblower protection and open data as key tools to address corruption and malpractices. However, there has been no assessment of the impact of these measures adopted by the Member States or by EU Agencies and institutions. Woodie project has addressed this gap by carrying out an in-depth study on the legal and policy framework at the EU level and of seven Member States. The study has been followed by the development of: 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 enhancing transparency and integrity in public procurement. The previous activities allowed the design of an assessment model to be applied by the public administration in the Member States. The model has been translated into an ICT tool, freely available in six languages (English, Italian, French, German, Slovenian, Romanian) upon registration at the website https://www.woodietool.eu Public administration can easily apply the ICT tool to self-evaluate their policies. This will increase the culture of openness and integrity in the public administration and the administrative capacity. Citizens will benefit from a more accountable public administration.

Integrity and transparency in public procurement is a priority at EU level. Public procurement in the EU is harmonised through a common legislative framework, which has been recently renovated in 2014 with three new Directives. Beyond the traditional goals of guaranteeing fair competition, transparency, and non-discrimination, these directives aim at achieving simplification, efficiency and flexibilisation of the regime. In addition, the Directives envisage several rules designed to prevent or at least reduce, the risks of illegality and corruption in public procurement. The project directly involves seven countries: Austria, Estonia, France, Ireland, Italy, Romania and Slovenia and the activities will take place in all these countries. The partner in Romania will carry out the activities in Estonia, while the Italian partners will carry out those in Ireland thanks to the collaboration of an Irish researcher. These countries have been chosen because they could be considered an interesting sample for a comparative impact assessment. The openness of the market - also related to the size of the country – varies and the overall level of vulnerability of public procurement to crime and corruption is different (e.g., Ireland and Slovenia have identified by previous EU projects as less vulnerable). Varied is also the level of awareness and engagement of citizens (e.g., Romania is standing alone for the level of citizens engagement, and Italy registers a certain degree of awareness and citizens’ commitment). The public administration in these countries is also organised in a variety of manner (highly centralised, regionalised and even highly disperse if, for example, we consider the number of purchasing bodies in a country like Italy). Only Romania and Ireland have comprehensive self-standing legislation on whistleblowers, while all the other countries have partial provisions inserted in other pieces of legislation (anti-corruption law, public employees law, etc.). Moreover, some countries (e.g., Italy in 2017 and France in 2016) have recently updated the legal framework. The digital transformation of public procurement is on-going, and it is still unknown if e-procurement will allow the State to buy at the best value for money, the bidders to find more business opportunity and the citizens to have less corrupted public procurement. A useful tool to transform raw procurement data into smart and open systems of information are needed to enter into a new area of democratic governance of public procurement. Among the chosen countries, the degree of commitment and implementation of open data initiatives is various. This range of countries allows to test the impact assessment methodology in different situations and consequently to develop a more comprehensive (that takes into account all the variables) assessment model. The carried out analysis will be essential to develop the ICT tool that could be applied in other countries. Therefore, the geographical scope is much broader than the seven countries analysed. In particular, the tool could be useful for the other Member States and also for the EU Eastern Partnership, taking into account that corruption is high on the agenda of those countries. In conclusion, the project directly involves seven countries, indirectly provide benefits for 28 Member States and also for the six countries of the EU Eastern Partnership.