This article is written by Juan MartĂ­n Vila and Alvaro Herrero

In 2018, the City of Buenos Aires implemented the publication of public procurement data, under the international standards designed by Open Contracting Partnership (OCP).

This outstanding achievement was the result of a complex, high-value public management experience, requiring extensive work, consensus building, and dialogue promotion across government agencies.

In order to achieve OCP standards, it was necessary to overcome barriers, cultural resistance, and fear. Being a pioneer in these issues implies breaking the status quo, innovating, and evangelising

Since 2007, enhancing government efficiency and state modernisation have been top priorities for the government of Buenos Aires City. The implementation of Buenos Aires Compras (BAC) in 2009 — an electronic system to manage and process procurement of goods and services — was a key milestone.

At that time, BAC was a highly innovative purchasing digital module that sought to replicate the different forms of procurement established in regulations.

The City of Buenos Aires has had different milestones over the years to arrive at the current public procurement policy. In 2006, Law 2095 was enacted, which gave a consistent regulatory framework, for in 2009 to implement the electronic purchasing and contracting system Buenos Aires Compras (BAC), accompanied by a public website, and which was mandatory for use by all jurisdictions in 2013, through the resolution 424. Finally, it was necessary to achieve the opening of data, which was achieved in 2018, but in 2019 these data were finally published under the standard of the Open Contracting Partnership.

Almost a decade later, the Mayor of Buenos Aires city convened an Open State Working Group, bringing together representatives from the three branches of government and civil society organisations.

The coalition that was formed rapidly yielded results

The goal was to co-create an open government agenda — not exactly easy. A group of vibrant civil society organisations, including the Civil Association for Equality and Justice (ACIJ), Chequeado, and La Nación newspaper, released a report entitled "Transparency in public procurement in the City of Buenos Aires".

Among its findings was that which showed that although procurement information was available in Buenos Aires’ open data portal, this was far from compliant with Open Contracting standards. So the challenge was set.

In order to tackle it head-one, the government of Buenos Aires city partnered with OCP to implement its standards. This required two different areas of Buenos Aires government to team up with OCP:

  • The General Directorate of Purchasing and Contracting of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, which was responsible for the management of the BAC system;
  • The General Directorate of Institutional Quality and Open Government, located at the centre of government in the office of the Secretary General and International Relations, which was responsible for the implementation of open government policies and for the operation of the Open Data portal; and
  • The Open Contracting Partnership, the leading, global organisation in the field of procurement transparency reforms.

The coalition that was formed rapidly yielded results.

As a result of the adoption of the OCP standards, in less than a year, procurement information was simplified and published in open format. This had a tremendous impact on the transparency, quality, and reusability of the data.

Third parties were then able to process the new procurement data and generate an added value. A single file in JSON format, which contains all the information and traceability of the city’s public purchases, replaced the original dataset containing 26 different tables. This means that today a single dataset provides information on each of the 25,000 procurement processes that take place every year.

One year later, amid growing demand for enhanced participation, transparency, and collaboration owing to COVID-19, governments are now implementing open government policies that redefine the relationship between state and citizenry.

Within the context of a pandemic, health sector procurement needed to be more transparent than ever before

In the current recovery stage, achieving procurement efficiency is a key step to increase social trust in governments.

For the City of Buenos Aires, having implemented the Open Contracting standards in advance allowed it to quickly deploy a new Emergency Procurement Platform. This initiative showcased not just regular, recurrent purchases, but also emergency ones, including detailed citizen-oriented briefings describing the reasons for extraordinary acquisitions, and listing high demand supplies.

A committee overseeing the ethics and monitoring of the platform was also established, taking in government, local and international civil society representatives to ensure procurement met the highest transparency standards.

Within the context of a pandemic, health sector procurement needed to be more transparent than ever before. Procurement transparency became a higher priority and was perceived by both citizenry and government as an indispensable governance issue.

Allowing citizens to understand public procurement data more easily, especially in times of global pandemics, is a key challenge for democratic regimes. The publication of procurement data using Open Contracting international standards is not only a cornerstone of public accountability, but also one for increasing citizens’ trust in government. — Juan Martín Vila and Alvaro Herrero

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