DIGIWHIST’s Opentender.eu contains data from over 30 European countries.
Researchers at the anti-corruption project DIGIWHIST have launched Opentender.eu, a digital database that allows anyone to search millions of public contracts in 35 European jurisdictions. The database includes 27 billion euros in tenders from the 28 EU member states, Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Serbia, Georgia and Armenia and the European Commission. Data ranges from 2003 (Norway) to 2017.
The DIGIWHIST, or Digital Whistleblower, project aims to improve trust in governments and efficiency in public spending by monitoring the transparency and accountability of public institutions. The researchers aim to create governance indicators using interactive tools such as Opentender.eu. The project is supported by a grant from the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.
Opentender.eu allows anyone – from journalists to public authorities to ordinary citizens – to examine the risk of fraud and favourable treatment. With 17.5 million public tenders available, users can:
- search data on tenders, companies and authorities;
- compare across sectors, suppliers and buyers;
- evaluate administrative capacity, transparency and integrity of tenders;
- or simply visualise data on public tenders in 35 jurisdictions.
The consortium, led by the University of Cambridge, includes ERCAS (Hertie School), the Government Transparency Institute, Hungary; Datlab, Czech Republic; Open Knowledge Foundation Deutschland, Germany; and Transcrime (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore) organised crime research centre, Italy. DIGIWHIST builds extensively on the partners' prior innovative work in this area, particularly that of the European Commission-funded FP7 project ANTICORRP.
The Hertie School research team is led by Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, Professor of Democracy Studies.
Learn more about Opentender.eu here.