Project information
E-Procurement in EU: Impacts of centralisation on transparency

One of the basic principles of public procurement is transparency. Transparency in public procurement requires that public bodies publish and disclose information throughout the life cycle of public procurement, including procurement policies, procurement plans, tender notices, evaluation criteria, contract awards, and financial statements. E-procurement is considered as an important tool to improve transparency in public procurement (Aminah et al., 2018; Dema, 2015). The OECD (2000) suggested that centralised public procurement could contribute to greater transparency through better control and compliance. While the EU orientation is towards transparent centralised e-procurement, in practise, public authorities in the EU combine centralised and decentralised approaches when implementing e-procurement (United Nations, 2011). Therefore, it is possible to hypothesise that the implementation of e-procurement varies from country to country and that the impact on transparency may also vary. The available literature has not paid enough attention to this. The applicant intends to assess and compare the level of transparency in different e-procurement systems in selected EU countries. The aim of this SGS project, which grew out of the researcher’s dissertation, is to develop and test a pilot method for evaluating the transparency of public procurement in the context of centralised and decentralised e-procurement systems.