Watch While It Happens: Three interventions for civic oversight of public procurement

By Baone Twala This policy brief makes proposals for enabling greater civil society oversight of public procurement in South Africa. Conventional oversight arrives late, as shown by irregularities surfaced in audits long after contracts have been awarded and services have failed. Here PARI argues that civil society, communities and the public can be given a defined role in scrutinising public procurement. Based on longer position paper, Observe, Record, Report: Real-time Citizen Engagement with Public Procurement in South Africa , this brief proposes three interventions that government can pilot immediately and scale as capacity grows. It proposes introducing civic observers for high value, high risk procurement; expanding the use of social audits of procurement processes; and enhancing transparency through the application of clear open data standards across procurement processes and systems. It also sets out the safeguards needed to protect community monitors, officials and the procurement process itself. These measures have been successfully used in several countries to improve the integrity and efficacy of public procurement. South Africa is already moving slowly in this direction. It has the institutional and civic capacity to pilot, and then embed, these transparent and participatory approaches.