Open procurement as an anti-corruption instrument

Every public tender in Ukraine above a low threshold runs through an open electronic system. The announcement, the specification, the bids, the evaluation, the winner, the contract and the amendments are all published, and anyone can read them without registering.

What that changes mechanically

Several old techniques simply stop working. A tender announced too late for anyone but the intended winner to prepare is visible as such. A specification written around one manufacturer's product can be read by that manufacturer's competitors. A contract whose value doubles through amendments after signature leaves a documented trail.

None of that is prevented. All of it is recorded, and recorded in a form that a journalist, a competitor or a monitoring organisation can search systematically.

How I use it commercially

Not mainly to bid. Mainly to understand a market. Before entering a segment I can see who has bought what, at what price, from whom, over several years. I can see which contractors win consistently and which appear once. I can see what a buyer actually paid rather than what a distributor tells me the market price is.

No commercial database I have ever subscribed to in any market has given me that quality of information, and this one is free.

Where transparency stops

It does not enforce. Publishing a suspicious award does not undo it, and a monitoring body still has to act. The system also cannot see collusion arranged outside it — bidders who agree in advance who will win look, in the data, like a competitive tender.

So the honest assessment is that Prozorro raised the cost and the visibility of manipulation without eliminating it. In this field, that is a substantial achievement and it is not a complete one.

That visibility and honesty are different claims is right, and the second is not one I can make. What I can say is how I use it commercially: I read my competitors' prices, an authority's speed of payment and the repeat winners out of it. Where transparency stops is clear too — the record shows who won and not how the decision was taken.