Procurement: Getting Cities to Buy Responsibly

Procurement project

• CorpWatch
• conceived as a wiki project
• contribute what you know about corporations
• funding ran out - and data is sort of locked away
• 100k corporations - buy ethical shoes, .....
• target government procurement market
• when governments buy they buy using codes and they do it on paper
• product codes could be linked to product safety, organizations etc.
• obama administration has released high-level data on usaspending.gov
• silos of data
• how do we help people purchase responsible
• last year worked with SCIU to advocate for obama administration policy, need to take worker records into consideration - now allowed to do that legally - contracting officer has the right to do that. but it's hard to that - pratham wants to make it possible.
• system to help procurement officers write better contract
• norway owns 2% of the worlds shares. norway has an ethical department
• help procurement officers buy more responsibly, they're allowed to, but its difficult
• currently data is volunteered - but there's also data in OSHA's database
• city of seattle, uses a company called buyspeed
• but we're going to give you data
• already a sustainable procurement leadership council (SPLC)
• want to extend to labor/worker rights, tax avoidance,
• first want to create a system to buy better
• SCIU is trying to show that you can do better & best contracts
• federal procurement law is long - how can we turn that into something usable
• procurement officers want to know how to write better contracts
• iraq, afghanistan etc people bought military systems badly
• citizen audit - collects together 990s
• Revolving door works at a more complicated level
• Bunny Greenhouse - whistleblower - they bought badly - wants to buy better for the government
• swiss government was able to put pressure on kenyan government - there are mini-wins
• sasha - anti-corruption and governance work in kenya
• lots of documents have been accidentally release and have created front-page headlines

Next step: survey of 100 procurement officers

• what do you buy, when, how do you choose,
• buyspeed is the most common system
• outcome of this will be to start building something useful

Resources

• center for american progress - think tank
• GobLab - beth novak
• Enigma - collects all the data on all coporations - customs etc - find truth in data
• Book: Haliburton's Army
• arachness - follows corruption in developing countries
  • search engine in 100 different languages to detect corruption
  • high per seat price
  • banks are main customer