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Increasing transparency and accountability: How Mexico is opening up and connecting procurement data
National Anti-corruption System Secretariat, Mexico,
6 minute read
Mexico’s National Digital Platform is a pillar of the country’s General Law of the National Anti-corruption System. It’s now moving into an exciting new phase of development.
Summary
Rooting out corruption depends on access to open data and an engaged public
Bringing data together from different levels of government, making it accessible, comparable and useful in combating corruption, can be a challenge
A coordinated national approach can help sub-national governments, who often lack the necessary skills and resources, to provide data to a national platform
The problem
The General Law of the National Anti-Corruption System (NACS Law) puts in place obligations on procurement transparency for the whole country, but as a Federal Republic, much of Mexico’s public sector spending is devolved to the 32 sovereign, autonomous states and federal entities. The law requires that each state put in place systems to provide local procurement data to the national platform, but obtaining quality data from each of Mexico’s 32 states, institutions and autonomous bodies has been one of the biggest challenges for the national platform team.
“Open data can help prevent and tackle corruption by shedding light on government activities, decisions, and expenditures, and by increasing levels of accountability, allowing citizens and government to better monitor the flow and use of public money”
For example, in order to stop a corrupt official that has been debarred in one state from finding a job in another (as currently happens in Mexico), the national platform requires that all states provide data on Debarred Civil Servants and Companies. Currently only the federal government, the State of Mexico and Sonora are providing this information.
The approach
The National Digital Platform (Plataforma Digital Nacional - PDN) enables key information to be gathered, consulted on and cross-examined by the National Anti-corruption System (Sistema Nacional Anticorrupción) to prevent, investigate and sanction corruption from all levels of government.
The PDN, which is developed, and administered by the National Anti-corruption System Secretariat (SESNA) aims to populate 6 datasets from across federal and state government institutions and make them publicly accessible. The 6 datasets (referred to as ‘Systems’) are:
assets, conflict-of-interest, and tax declarations (‘System 1’)
public officials involved in public procurement contracts (‘System 2’)
sanctioned public officials and individuals (‘System 3’)
information and communications system of the NACS and the national auditing system (‘System 4’)
public complaints related to corruption (‘System 5’)
public procurement contracts (‘System 6’)
The PDN team at SESNA saw the need to support the sub-national governments to provide data while recognising that needs and contexts would vary across the country.
In order to provide a clearer picture of each state’s situation, SESNA launched a dashboard to illustrate where success had been achieved and where more progress was needed.
SESNA’s dashboard illustrating how each state is delivering open data.
The launch of the dashboard was accompanied by a library providing open source, easy-to-replicate tools to enable the sub-national governments to overcome the technical challenges of providing their data to the national platform. The library (el Mercado Digital Anticorrupción) launched with tools for conflicts of interest declaration and web services for connecting local Civil Service Buyers Registers and the Debarred Civil Servants and Companies lists.
An illustration from the video promoting the new tools library.
The UK Government Digital Service (GDS) Global Digital Marketplace Programme has been working with the PDN team in SESNA since December 2019, supporting them to run a pilot project with three states (Chihuahua, Jalisco and Oaxaca) with a focus on ‘System 2’ and ‘System 3’ of the PDN.
In addition to developing the API, the PDN team is supporting:
knowledge transfer to each pilot states’ technical teams, so that they’re self-sufficient to use, update and maintain the API
the creation of API documentation and guides, which are necessary to reproduce the project in other states
Although the data currently collected on the national platform is still predominantly from the federal government, there is now a new momentum behind the drive to connect state level data. Along with the data from Sonora and the State of Mexico, the states of Aguascalientes and Jalisco are supplying conflicts of interest data and the three states participating in the pilot are on schedule to add their buyers registers and disbarred lists in January 2021.
The launch event for the latest version of the national platform attracted hundreds of attendees from government and civil society, and included an expert panel discussion with representatives from the local chapter of Transparency International and the Inter-American Development Bank.
SESNA’s hands-on approach, supporting pilot projects and the open-source tools, manuals and guides to help those generating and standardizing data at local level, should see significant quantities of quality data starting to reach the PDN over the next year.
“The [NACS] has the potential to be a ‘game changer’ in Mexico’s fight against corruption. [However...] the interoperability of existing information systems present significant technical challenges”
“We want everything to be ‘transparent’. This is great, but transparency without purpose is not useful. [...] To move on, there needs to be a real drive to open and standardize data, and a true political commitment ”
Combining the political commitment with a tenacious focus on delivering technical solutions, is a challenge that still faces the SESNA team in order to get the PDN fully up and running with quality usable data.
Next steps
Building on the current momentum, SESNA have a busy schedule ahead to complete the pilot with Chihuahua, Jalisco and Oaxaca, make more tools available to government agencies via the Mercado Digital Anticorrupción Library and expand support states and federal entities to provide more and better data to the platform.
The GDS Global Digital Marketplace Programme continues to support the SESNA PDN team over the coming months and into 2021, laying the foundations to scale the work to all 32 states. This will help Mexico to have a truly national view on and ability to mitigate, corruption and fraud risks and to implement the obligations of the NACS Law.
