Contracts, Data and Investigations – COVID-19: Edition 2020-06-12
The role of past performance in awarding contracts, Corona shopping lists, the price of making ventilators, scrutinizing supply chains, and contracts for campaign money
This newsletter gathers stories covering the use and abuse of government contracts during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. Make sure to subscribe to get this newsletter to your inbox. Let us know about your stories and content. We, Sophie and Georg, would love to hear about them.
Let’s kick off with the UK and a highly relevant procurement question: Are significant or persistent deficiencies in prior contracts a reason for excluding the bidder? We believe past performance should play a strong role in awarding contracts. Diane Taylor writes in The Guardian about outsourcing firm Serco winning a £45m test-and-trace contract despite a track record of poor performance. The UK has updated its outsourcing guidelines on 10 June. Emma Youle at HuffPost UK investigates the secrecy surrounding 12 new Nightingale hospitals as she tracks down the firms and costs. In The Times, Philip Aldrick provides a glimpse into the logistical challenge of procuring personal protective equipment.
Stefan Melichar of Profil looks at Austria’s €138m Corona shopping list and finds that one-third of the value went to one supplier, a mountaineering equipment firm.
In an investigation into proper planning of testing capacity, The Guardian’s Christopher Knaus dissects a $200m deal for test kits in Australia.
In the Philippines, the lockdown has also suspended the review of complaints about procurement processes, increasing the risk of corruption in a pandemic, Lian Buan at Rappler writes. Field investigations and hearings are also on hold.
In India, Anoo Bhuyan of IndiaSpend compares the price of protective equipment in private and government-run hospitals, in an investigation into suspected overcharging of private patients.
The price of making ventilators. Mexico has built thousands of ventilators, in some cases by workers in unsafe conditions. But almost all of the breathing devices have been exported, according to an investigation by El Clip’s Centinela project, led by Javier Quintero at Quinto Elemento Lab, Mercedes Agüero at Televisión Pública Costa Rica and Columbia Journalism Investigations.
Sara España writes about the wave of corruption cases in Ecuador for El País. The country’s procurement agency SERCOP has now made its COVID-19 related procurement database available as standardized open contracting data.
Who sells and produces masks? In the US, federal agencies have spent millions of dollars on masks, often without knowing who made them, find Yeganeh Torbati and Derek Willis at ProPublica as they scrutinize the supply chain and a Delaware-registered corporation believed to be fictitious. NPR’s Cheryl Thompson, Joel Rose, and Robert Benincasa examine the many middlemen and first-time contractors involved in the protective equipment business. In Hawaii, a major campaign donor got a million-dollar cleaning contract through emergency procedures, reveals Blaze Lovell at the Honolulu Civil Beat. Similarly, Daniel Ducassi at the Florida Bulldog looks at the no-bid contracts to firms that have contributed millions to the state governor’s campaigns.
A new prototype tool visualizes funding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Developed by Devinit for the World Bank and the Netherlands, it uses funding data published to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ Financial Tracking Service (FTS).
Peru’s Convoca has collected judges’ decisions to lift sanctions on companies, allowing them to bid and win public contracts for $260m, in a painstaking investigation led by Óscar Libón. Based on information from the procurement agency OSCE and the judiciary, the new database Medidas Cautelares S.A. covers decisions between 2008-2019.
For our recommendations, resources and tools, check our COVID-19 resource page.
This newsletter has been put together by the Open Contracting Partnership. Comments? Suggestions? Got a story to share? Write to Sophie or Georg at media@open-contracting.org. Thanks for reading.
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