Contracts, Data and Investigations – COVID-19: Edition 2020-09-18
This week’s content: Bad optics for British official, the cost of no-bid contracts, Argentina testing goes local, overpriced contracts in the Philippines
This newsletter gathers stories covering the use and abuse of government contracts during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. Let us know about your stories and content. We, Sophie and Georg, would love to hear about them.
UK journalists continue to make inroads in exposing opaque emergency procurement. An official agreed to join KPMG shortly before leading a coronavirus project that awarded £1.5 million in contracts to the consultancy firm without tender, the Financial Times’ Tabby Kinder reports. At openDemocracy, Caroline Molloy uncovers a previously unreported contract awarded to Serco, despite the outsourcing firm’s involvement in a troubled trace-and-test scheme. While Serco appears to be the biggest winner among UK outsourcers, the pandemic response doesn’t seem to have turned into a bonanza for the industry, writes Gill Plimmer based on research by Tussell.
What could go wrong? Reporting for the Huffington Post UK, Arj Sing finds the UK’s former transport secretary – infamous for awarding ferry contracts to a company without ships – will be paid £100,000 a year to advise the ports company. The controversial data analytics firm Palantir has won a contract to run the UK’s new “border flow tool”, which will collate data on the transit of goods and customs, writes The Guardian’s David Pegg.
According to an audit of the United States Postal Service, non-competitive contracts for mail transport equipment may have cost taxpayers $53 million more than if they’d been awarded through a bidding process, reports Heidi Przybyla for NBC News.
La Nación’s Iván Ruiz, Fabiola Czubaj, Florencia Rodríguez Altube explore whether Argentina’s strategy of buying locally developed coronavirus tests is really all it’s cracked up to be. The report is part of Red Palta’s investigation into the firms dominating the testing market in Latin America.
Jenny Lei Ravelo sums up the corruption allegations against the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation – PhilHealth for Devex, including overpricing in IT equipment purchases. The government’s contracts for COVID-19 supplies are being called out for costing P400 million ($8 million) more than similar items bought by the private sector, writes Leila Salaverria in the Inquirer.
In Germany, Matthias Gebauer, Claus Hecking and Timo Lehmann at Der Spiegel ask how a tiny firm backed by investors in Abu Dhabi beat Germany’s leading arms manufacturer to win a €250 million contract to supply assault rifles. The company is part of the United Arab Emirate’s new state-owned defence conglomerate EDGE.
The John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford University and Big Local News are offering data journalism grants for "data-driven, replicable stories related to the pandemic." It’s open to journalists worldwide.
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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