Contracts, Data and Investigations: COVID-19 – Edition 2020-05-15
Private companies under scrutiny, get to know your suppliers, curious deliveries
This newsletter gathers stories covering the use and abuse of government contracts during the COVID-19 pandemic. Subscribe now to receive this newsletter regularly. And please send us your stories and content. We, Hera, Sophie and Georg, would love to hear about them.
The performance of private companies running services for government remains under scrutiny. “Chaos” in a firm’s management of PPE stock in the UK may have led to delays in distributing critical supplies to health workers, an investigation by The Guardian’s Harry Davies shows. In Quebec, Canada, officials and public health experts have questioned a decision to award McKinsey consultants with a C$1.7 million contract to advise the government on lifting restrictions, reports Guillaume Bourgault-Côté in Le Devoir.
Can suppliers provide what they promise? Politico’s Helena Bottemiller Evich and Ryan McCrimmon look at the little-known companies taking part in a US$1.2 billion food bank delivery scheme by the U.S. Agriculture Department. In Brazil, Fábio Bispo and Hyury Potter at The Intercept dig into forged proposals and phantom ventilators purchased for R$33 million in Santa Catarina. Meanwhile, irregularities in emergency contracts are being investigated in 11 Brazilian states and the country’s federal district.
Spending on medical equipment offers insights into emergency preparedness. In Nigeria, Dataphyte’s Benedicta Akpede runs the numbers on ventilators, finding only one breathing device is available for every 1.2 million Nigerians.
Topping the list of surprising purchases is a curious deal examined by Bivol’s Dimitar Stoyanov in Bulgaria, where an expected delivery of medical supplies from Saudia Arabia turned out to be more than a dozen tons of dried dates. Elsewhere, Indonesia ordered 300,000 rapid test kits from the Netherlands which were, in fact, made in China, and Australia bought 1.5 million antibody tests that can’t be used. Ventilators delivered “from Russia, with love” to the US have been ditched, while the same model has caused two deadly fires in Moscow and St. Petersburg, BuzzFeed’s Christopher Miller reports.
Fulfilling public information requests is essential during the pandemic to preserve citizens’ right to transparency, argues The New York Times editorial board. That message hasn’t quite reached Utah, where a briefing on the state’s $110 million spending on Coronavirus response measures was held behind closed doors reports Bethany Rodgers. (However, Utah’s new public dashboard on COVID-19 spending, announced at that meeting, is a rare example of information sharing in the US).
Secrecy around procurement decision-making amid the Coronavirus crisis is turning efforts by democracy and transparency campaigners in Southeast Europe into a Sisyphean task, writes Akria Cipa in the Balkan Insight.
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 Hera, Sophie or Georg at media@open-contracting.org. Thanks for reading.
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