prices than decentralized units. Moreover, the results show that in areas in which institutional quality is lower or corruption is higher, the effect of centralization in terms of negotiating lower prices is much stronger, with savings of up to 60% of the price paid by local health service providers that procure independently (Baldi & Vannoni, 2015).

In sum, there are strong theoretical arguments for collaborative and centralized procurement (Albano & Sparro, 2010), however the empirical basis is rather scattered and in general of insufficient quality. The organizational and product characteristics which define the savings potential and user satisfaction with such practices need a lot more systematic study. Furthermore, better understanding the interaction between central purchasing bodies, public organizations buying through central framework agreements and supplier opportunistic behavior require more comprehensive study for identifying trade-offs between savings at the bidding stage and difficulties of contract implementation.

# 2. <u>Transparency and watchdog portals</u>

# _a) Theory_

As noted earlier, e-procurement generates a large amount of structured or semi-structured information which can inform bidding decisions, civil society oversight, as well as within-government management decisions. Such rich datasets are almost always publicly released on transparency portals which report announcement data in line with national legislation while allowing for some limited search functions. Typically, there is no way to download the full dataset and providing aggregate statistics is not possible (e.g. total value of contracts won by any particular company in a certain period) (Cingolani et al., 2015). Classic examples of such portals are the EU’s Tenders Electronic Daily<sup>18</sup> or the more recently introduced Bangladeshi government procurement portal<sup>19</sup> to name a few. Watchdog portals, however, offer additional functionalities, typically using the same source data as transparency portals run by governments. These portals allow for monitoring governments from the viewpoint of corruption risks and spending efficiency by providing novel indicators which help making sense of the diverse and often hard-to-interpret data and also allow for calculating summary statistics. Widely publicized, early examples are the Slovakian public procurement portal<sup>20</sup> or its Georgian twin,<sup>21</sup> both run by Transparency International local chapters; examples from developing countries can be found in Nigeria,<sup>22</sup> Indonesia,<sup>23</sup> or Mexico<sup>24</sup> to name a few.

Transparency and watchdog portals are expected to improve value for money and access through influencing bidder behavior as well as underpinning accountability mechanisms vis à vis the society at large and within the government. The impact on bidding behavior is not discussed here in detail as it has been extensively covered in section D.1. Transparency and watchdog portals are expected to support (predominantly) vertical government accountability mechanisms by providing information on bidding processes and actor behavior to civil society. While a lot has been assumed about the transformational impact of transparency and sheer information provision, it is clear by now that they have to be combined with sufficient motivation and capacity to act on the revealed information, in particular civil society monitoring (Center for Global Development, 2014; Kenny, 2010). In addition, the impact of transparency in complex fields such as government procurement hinges on the actual usability and accessibility of the data, e.g. reaching the relevant information in two to three clicks rather than half an hour of digging in diverse websites. Nevertheless, information of government contracts can have a broader, albeit less measurable, impact on public discourse and citizen awareness of public spending (i.e. tax knowledge and

> 18 <u>http://ted.europa.eu/</u>

> 19 <u>http://www.eprocure.gov.bd/</u>

> 20 <u>http://tender.sme.sk/en/reports?cut=contract_date:2013,12</u>

> 21 <u>http://tendermonitor.ge/en</u>

> 22 <u>http://tendermonitor.ge/en</u>

> 23 <u>http://opentender.net/content/database</u>

> 24 - <u>http://mexico.procurement analytics.org/</u>

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