Goal: Promote the establishment of an effective competition framework, including sound legislation and an independent, transparent and well-resourced competition agency. Create a truly transparent and competitive state procurement system that leaves no room for corruption, collusion and other misuse, allows for public scrutiny of government spending, is trusted by stakeholders and extensively used by businesses.

TI Georgia will:

●  Create and publish an in-depth analytical report covering the Competition and State Procurement Agency’s capacity, transparency, accountability and integrity. The organization will work closely with the competition agency and monitor its activities based on the National Competition Action Plan.

●   Look at supervision mechanisms to overview how the law on competition is implemented and how the agency works, how its political independence is assured, and how effectively it assures competition and free trade. We will monitor the operation of the Agency in order to determine whether it has the capacity to cope with its two important roles (procurement and competition). A sample of decisions will be selected and the independence and impartiality of the Agency will be assessed in practice. The transparency of the Agency will be reviewed, and if necessary, recommendations on how to ensure its transparency and create mechanisms for sharing public information, and on standard operating procedures will be provided.

●  Issue at least two publications per year on the competition environment and political connectedness of specific markets and sectors. As mentioned above, the food production and construction sectors will be the first to be analyzed. TI Georgia will analyze the positions of major actors in each market, and will also investigate connections between these firms and the Georgian government which might pose potential corruption risks and highlight concerns for further investigation to the CSPA. For example, in the cases of both the food production and construction centers, TI Georgia plans to check for correlations between the political connections of major firms, and those firms’ ability to pass safety inspections, obtain permits, and win state tenders.

●   Set up a whistle blower mechanism, allowing citizens or individuals working in or with relevant knowledge to safely share their concerns and observations concerning companies that misuse their market power or lack accountability in their business conduct. These reports will be collected and verified by TI Georgia, supplemented with further research and, on a case-by-case basis, discussed with the CSPA. Potentially, TI Georgia will encourage the CSPA to establish its own whistle-blower mechanism and assist in this process.

●   Organise round tables/workshops to train journalists (including regional journalists) in order to make them more aware of competition regulations and general conditions of the Georgia’s market. One event for journalists per year will be held. TI Georgia will involve in this process the representatives of different universities and research institutions working in this direction.

●   Create, operate and promote a procurement monitoring website. For this purpose, we will develop software that will automatically and regularly download all relevant tender data from the website procurement.gov.ge. This data will be repackaged and presented in a form that will allow any user to search, filter and download this information and re-use it for any purpose. The site will also provide intuitive visualizations that will allow for an easy interpretation of aggregate data – information that is currently not accessible. The website will allow users to receive custom reports and custom email notifications, for example when a local government body announces a new major tender or when a product or service of a specific type is procured by a government body.  Filters will automatically red-flag certain tenders based on predetermined risk criteria, highlighting contracts that media outlets and civil society activists should scrutinize in more detail.

●   Train journalists, bloggers, activists, business representatives, relevant government officials, academics and researchers in how they can derive useful information from the website and utilize it in their working environment. Tutorial videos will be published online to reach a larger audience of potential users.

●   A quarterly policy brief in English and Georgian language will shed light on procurement data derived from the platform, highlight developments and spending in certain sectors and by selected government agencies and provide recommendations for improving the procurement system, in terms of decreasing corruption risks and increasing competitiveness and fairness of the e-procurement process.