What is basic your idea of your initiative and what are you trying to accomplish with it? When was the first thought born about the project?
The zIndex.cz is a project focused on the systemic evaluation of adherence of contracting authorities to best practice standards in awarding public procurement (aka in the process of purchasing goods or services from public funds). Our aim is – in the first time of the history of public procurement in the Czech Republic (and as far as we know also world-wide) to systematically compare and contrast the public procurement practices of ALL contracting authorities in Czech Republic. We evaluate their practices according to three main groups of criteria.
First group of criteria is focused on the openness of the public tender. We ask and assess whether interested companies could actually know about the fact that the contracting authority wants to purchase some work or service. We look at the share of announced public procurements on the total amount of funds, which the contracting authority had for purchasing goods and services, we evaluate the openness of the tender procedure deployed by the contracting authority (open versus restricted types of procedures), etc.
Second group assesses whether the contracting authority was actually able to generate competition among the bidders. The basic indicator of competition is the number of bids submitted to the tender, combined with concentration index (this detects repetitive awarding of public procurements to limited number of companies) and we award bonus to contracting authorities, who set deadlines for delivery of bids longer than required by law (the legal deadlines are often too short for preparation of a good bid).
Third group evaluates the possibility to control the process of public procurement during and after the process. The zIndex thus encompasses the information whether the Office for Protection of Competition has ever penalized the contracting authority for mistakes of failures in the public procurement process. We also look at the correctness of the data about the public procurement in the Information System of Public Procurement (omissions or mistakes in the data reduce the efficiency of ex post control) etc.
Out of the above stated indicators we formulate a composite index – zIndex – which ranks similar contracting authorities according to their adherence to best practices, which we have derived from OECD public procurement principles, European Commission practices, Transparency International etc.
The idea was born as kind of a side-way effect to our research – we wanted to run some econometric experiment on the data on public procurements in the Czech Republic. Nevertheless, when we downloaded the database by means of web crawlers, we found out that there is a lot more about public procurements in the Czech Republic than just data and we started to do the public work The whole project was born in March/April 2010 and published in January 2011 – the clearing of the data and elaboration of the methodology took us nearly 1 year.
Our aim is to help in cultivating the practice of PP in Czech republic. We think that such improvement might have some effect on corruption, which is perceived as the most serious problem of Czech economy. Idea is simple – authority which adheres to best practice recommendations leaves minimum space for corruption. So far, the pressure on doing so is minimal – and the periodic publication of zIndex ranking could induce some.
How much time did it take to launch the project before it went live? What were the first reaction of the people?
The elaboration of the project took us about a year between the idea and first publishing of our results. We were mainly two persons working on it (Jana Chvalkovská, Jiří Skuhrovec), later on, Petr Janský joined us. For data clearing, graphics etc., we were also working together with students from the Institute of Economic Studies and with Jiří’s IT friends. The total time invested into the project could be about four thousand man-hours.
We published the results (zIndex ranking of ministries) on January 26, 2011 on a press conference and the reaction was huge. We got substantial space in the media (TV, radio, press – printed and online). Reactions were mostly positive – civic associations and people calling us and writing us emails with their opinions and experience, institutions asking us about the best practice manuals that we used etc. Negative reaction came from the Ministry of Justice which ended up last in our ranking – nonetheless, they were also quite constructive.
In conclusion, however, none of the positive reactions converted into funding for our project – and thus so far we still function without any funding (apart from our University scholarships).
Did and how the idea change since Day1? What are your users saying and how are you adapting to their needs?
Well, due to obtained publicity, we are currently in a bit better position when asking for information from the contracting authorities – they now know that it is necessary to answer us – so before releasing next version of zIndex for municipalities, we will write to all of them a list of questions – that would help us (if responded) to improve the accuracy of our calculations.
As to the users – we are trying to gradually improve our web page in order to enable a search in our ranking. We communicate actively with media (e.g. by releasing suspicious public procurements) and we are still looking for ways how to finance our activities.
The main idea of ranking the institutions holds quite firmly, however we needed to slightly bend our ideal methodology couple of times – due to availability and quality of the data. Our plan is to develop most informative index, which you simply can’t make up ex ante from the armchair. Thus we’re continuously analyzing data, consulting experts – including suppliers and contracting authorities.
What are your plans for near and further future?
In the first place, we need to work on zIndex for cities and also on Mark II zIndex for ministries – both of them shall be released within the next 2 months. We are also developing several possible plans on how to get some cash injected into our project – we hope that some of them will be successful. Apart from that we are (as you know from the conference) with several other initiatives – looking mainly for ready-at-hand ways for improvement of our work.
Our primary target is to publish zIndex for all contracting authorities (roughly 4000 institutions), then gradually add more data and information to further improve our index. The major contribution will be in its periodic publication, which will demonstrate the development of each institution’s practice, that can directly be connected to its managers (typically elected leaders). This should keep the project and its positive impacts (such as greater transparency, reduction of corruption in public procurement and greater involvement of public into watchdog activities) going on in a sustainable manner.
What is/was your main obstacle while developing and running your project?
Lack of financing, a lot of hostility and unfair behavior in non-governmental sphere. Apart from that I see some slight increase in weird people following our project – which – in some aspects enlightens also certain mafia practices in public procurements – we will see what comes out of this in the future.
Why no financing for you? Are you trying to get some?
As to the financing - we tried foundations that support this type of activities (Open Society Fund Prague, CEE Trust etc.), but we were declined. According to the Open Society Fund we supposedly do not have positive impacts on non-governmental sector - we do not agree, but we are not able to change their decision. We are still trying to find some funding - yet we cannot easily accept support from private companies - as it might be potentially threat to our independence (nevertheless we are working on some transparent solution). Currently, we are developing second round of our funding effort - targeted on wealthy individuals :-)
Why there is hostility from other NGOs towards you?
I would not say hostility - especially not with those NGOs that were on the eDemocracy Day :-) We had quite a bad experience with groups of people (both academic and NGO sector) actually copying our project and then becoming our direct competitors (when applying for funds etc. - e.g. people from a group that started to copy our work assessed on one occassion our funding application etc.) - which I kind of consider disgusting - especially if everybody is pretending to work for the hapinness of mankind :-/. It is funny that our method was to some extent even deployed by the Ministry of Regional Development (we are still discussing the possibility to get funding from them).