Transparency in Procurement - Principles and Practices

Since 2009, NIGP has been steadily working on a set of principles and practices for public sector procurement which in their words have the, “primary objective to gain recognition of public procurement as a profession by developing guiding principles for public procurement.”  The most recent Practice being worked on regards the Transparency of the procurement function in public sector organizations.

"Transparency" in procurement means much more than just spend transparency, but it is certainly a timely topic to be addressing as more and more states are mandating that their state agencies and anyone in receipt of state funds speed up the process of putting the finances, the budgets, the grants, current contracts, opportunities to contract, the salaries of staff and much more online.  With all of these being various ways of being transparent, when is it enough and when is it too much?  Does transparency mean just putting all of the raw information out there for data analysts and journalists to pour over, or does transparency mean in addition to making the data available that it needs to be in a format that makes it easy to find and for the normal citizen to engage with?

If you are a public purchasing professional and want to have your say on the Transparency Practice, head over to the site dedicated to NIGP’s Principles and Practices for Public Procurement: http://principlesandpractices.posterous.com/pages/public-comment-for-standards-of-practice.

Published: 8/19/2011

TAGS: transparency, nigp, procurement, principles, data, finance