The USAID/UK aid Transparency and Accountability in Public Administration and Services Project that is implementing by Eurasia Foundation has won the prestigious 2020 Digital Development Award!

Known as the #DigiAwards, the awards recognize and celebrate USAID-funded projects and activities that apply digital technologies and data-driven approaches to meet development challenges. The USAID/UK aid Transparency and Accountability in Public Administration and Services Project is among of TOP-5 projects worldwide selected for this award.

Transparency and Accountability in Public Administration and Services Activity (TAPAS) was awarded for helping to advance an electronic procurement system for government purchases and an anti-corruption watchdog network — bringing transparency to the previously opaque public procurement process and reducing corruption in public spending in Ukraine. 

In the award, the USAID/UK aid TAPAS activity was cited for helping to advance Prozorro – Ukraine’s innovative electronic public procurement system, and DOZORRO, which is both an anti-corruption watchdog network and a public procurement monitoring portal. Both DOZORRO and Prozorro were cited in the award justification for bringing transparency to previously murky public procurement and reducing corruption in public spending in Ukraine. With Prozorro serving as the legislatively-mandated system for virtually all public procurement, the addition of DOZORRO’s monitoring portal and watchdog network, with a suite of analytical tools, has resulted in a truly collaborative and transparent approach to address the systemic corruption in the public procurement process.

Transparency International-Ukraine (TI-U), an implementing partner of USAID/UK aid Transparency and Accountability in Public Administration and Services/TAPAS Activity – run by Eurasia Foundation (EF), together with a group of Ukrainian volunteers began to build an electronic procurement system for government purchases – known as Prozorro, in 2014, and the anti-corruption watchdog network – known as DOZORRO, in 2016.

Prozorro is a hybrid electronic open-source government e-procurement system created as the result of a partnership between business, government and civil society. Since the launch of the system, Prozorro has helped save $5.1 billion in public money.

The DOZORRO network is a community across Ukraine that monitors public procurements and flags high-risk tenders to government buyers, their managing entities and oversight authorities. An average of 700 grievances are submitted monthly. Using this AI-powered oversight approach, more than 4,500 high-risk public tenders were canceled, substantially amended by government buyers, or illegal tender decisions were reversed. The total value of these high-risk tenders was more than $470 million.

Learn more about the awards: https://www.usaid.gov/digital-development/digis