Six Open Contracting Innovation Challenge finalists win $5k ahead of $30k Grand Prize

After receiving 88 applications from 40 countries across the world, the Open Contracting Partnership (OCP) and the ODI is delighted to announce the finalists of the Open Contracting Innovation Challenge (OCIC). OCIC was launched to stimulate and gather ideas that strengthen the integrity and effectiveness of public procurement. As governments spend over $9.5 trillion through contracts with companies, even small improvements to procurement can have enormous cumulative impact.The six finalists for the Grand Prize – all of which will receive $5,000 and incubation support before pitching for $30,000 in September – come from across the globe. They include:

Contratobook by SpaceshipLabs from Mexico, who use machine learning to detect and flag potential contracts and contractors that may be involved in corruption scandals
OpenOpps from the UK, who propose to link buyers with government entities for its collection of data from over 450 different sources and 76 countries
Datlab from Czech Republic, whose proposal ranks public buyers based on transparency, competition and procurement results based on OCDS data
Telus, by the Sinar Project from Malaysia, who will hold public officials accountable by joining up data from ownership registries, public contracts and politically exposed persons to expose conflicts of interest
OCDSearch by the Ukraininan team OCDLabs, an open-source Open Contracting Data Standard search engine that is embeddable without programming to websites or apps
The Association of Industrial Automation Enterprises of Ukraine (AIAEU), whose idea DigitalTwins will use the data standard to digitalise procurement item descriptions

Judges also chose the winner of the Government Innovation Prize: the Bureau of Public Procurement in Nigeria, whose idea NOCOPO delivers wide-ranging stakeholder engagement with procurement information to solve problems around non-proactive disclosure of procurement information.

What next?

The six finalists and the GIP winner will come together in London on 28 and 29 June 2017 to receive specialist advice and plan the incubation phase.

The final pitch for the Grand Prize of $30,000 will be in September.

We’d like to thank everyone who applied for OCIC. The final decision was tight and difficult for our judges. We were humbled to see so many exciting applications come through from around the world, and believe that with so many great innovators working in this space, public procurement is undoubtedly being shaken up!

Tom Hunter is Innovation consultant at the ODI. Follow Tom on Twitter.

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