Procurement

Download this procurement guide, a reference for understanding where public procurement often fails – and what you can do to make it work better. By unpacking the procurement process into nine clear phases, this guide reveals where things often go wrong – from poor planning, wrong choice of procurement method, to weak contract oversight. The guide also suggests actions to reduce the impact on these risks on service delivery and possible measures to prevent risks from occurring in the first place.

This procurement transparency guide is a new approach to assessing information needed to hold municipalities accountable. Accurate and accessible procurement information – such as service delivery schedules, contact details for reporting problems, and clear service expectations – empowers residents to collaborate with municipalities, address challenges, suggest improvements, and ultimately also hold them accountable. Read the full report to find out more.

This guide aims to assist informal settlement residents to find important information about basic services provided by private companies through competitive bidding. It explains how and where to look for information in public procurement documents and gives examples of useful documents. It also shares practical tips and lessons from other informal settlement residents who have found important information from sources besides municipal websites.

We created a new procurement transparency assessment tool to evaluate how proactively municipalities share service-related procurement information.

We created a procurement training guide for informal settlement residents to learn about ways to hold their municipalities accountable for service delivery.