State Procurements: Keep Hoping For the Best

On September 15, 2009, the Institute of Information Freedom Development held in St.-Petersburg a press conference where presented the results of its 2009 research project “Information openness rating for official websites placing information on state procurements”.

Ivan Pavlov, IIFD Board Chair, and Vladimir Golubev, IIFD expert and the project leader, spoke about most interesting aspects of the study. The research methodology was developed by the IIFD experts. The organization is independent so that one can be sure that the study has been objective.

Mesrop Arutyunyan, an expert of the Speech Freedom Defense Committee (Armenia), also took part in the press conference. He spoke about information access problems in ex-USSR countries.

Top 10 ranked Russian governmental informational resources

placing information on state procurements (2009)

For 2009, the state procurement may amount to 4 trillion rubles. Today, information on all tenders and auctions organized by state bodies must be published at official state procurement websites in order to attract more potential participant and to enable effective competition; as a result, this will optimize expenditures and decrease corruption level.  But in Vladimir Golubev’s opinion, today one hardly can speak of any “civilization” in the field of state e-procurements.

By the way, upon President Dmitry Medvedev’s order, the Ministry for Economic Development and the Federal Antimonopoly Service are now checking reliability of information published at the federal official state procurement website. Results will be reported in October.

www.svobodainfo.org