Making Real Use of ‘Open Contracts’

Open Contracts

Open data movement pushes for automatic online contract publishing, but if crowdsourcing contracts monitoring is to be successful, appropriate platforms are needed. TI Slovakia developed a leading solution that requires additional resources for features development, project internationalization, more data, and community engagement.

Slovakia has mandated online publication of state contracts from Jan 1, 2011, however delivery of this measure is still far from perfect. The contracts are to be found on not less than 8.000 sites, publication quality is lacking, and sites such as the gov’t site  provide no space for blowing the whistle or public feedback.

To address such issues, TI Slovakia, in partnership with Fair Play Alliance, launched site Open Contracts (Slovak only, Google Translate http://bit.ly/OpenContracts) in late 2011. While the site offering advanced monitoring features is very popular (1/3 of the official site traffic), much is left to be done to reach a goal of a single-stop shop for all public contracts, and thus allowing effective monitoring and whistleblowing.

A project which is open-sourced (https://github.com/otvorenezmluvy) requires resources for additional features development, more data scrapers and community engagement. Currently, secured funding will run out in early 2013, and does not include plans for internationalization of the project.

Full list of issues that could be addressed by coders will be provided upon request.

Additional information

http://spectator.sme.sk/articles/view/45041/2/a_year_of_more_openness_and_a_few_shortcomings.html
http://bit.ly/OpenContracts (Google Translate of the Site)
https://github.com/otvorenezmluvy (Project github repository)
http://bit.ly/oztcamp12 (Open Contracts presentation at 2012 Transparency Camp, Washington D.C.)