The USAID/UK aid-funded Transparency and Accountability in Public Administration and Services (TAPAS) project, together with the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, recently published a second analytical report about the impact of open data on the Ukrainian economy. This report focuses on advances made in the road sector.
The report reviews the accessibility of open data from the State Road Agency of Ukraine (Ukravtodor), the government body responsible for overseeing national and regional road repair and maintenance projects. It shares real stories about how open data affects citizens, businesses, and the government by resolving social issues in the road sector.
Until 2013, it was impossible to track public spending on road reconstruction and maintenance in Ukraine. Important legislative changes between 2014 and 2016 allowed for public access to procurement data in the road sector.
Despite these advances, the road sector still faces corruption. In 2019, corruption cost the road reconstruction and maintenance sector an estimated 10 to15 billion UAH, nearly 10 to 15 percent of sector earnings.
Currently, journalists and NGOs can use open data services to monitor expenses in the road sector and investigate suspected corruption. By revealing illicit activity during competitive bidding, such investigations have resulted in the cancellation of certain tenders, large fines for bidders, and significant budget savings for the Ukrainian government.
Every citizen can impact the quality of road repair works. Organizations like CoST Ukraine, one of the leading global initiatives improving transparency and accountability in public infrastructure, allow people to check purchases for road renovation or construction in their cities and villages. CoST Ukraine coordinators help citizens to prepare appeals or complaints about needed repair work.
“When we first started in 2016, only industry professionals understood what was happening in the road sector,” says Svyatoslav Abramov, executive director of CoST Ukraine. “The situation has since changed. Before the open data era, each year we published 120 contracts for routine medium road repairs in Excel format. Now citizens receive information about over 12,000 contracts in the road sector annually. Open data has fueled the growth of a grassroots monitoring ecosystem that currently covers half the country. People continue to join us, and the collective effort has already yielded success stories: roads around the Ukrainian cities and towns in dire need of repairs have been repaired. Specific roads that were a real source of pain for local residents have been included in road repair plans for next year, and many others.”
