On July 26, the Executive Committee of the Yaremche City Council made a decision to connect the city to the Prozorro Public Procurement System. Thus, one of the cities of regional significance of Ivano-Frankivsk region joined the newest electronic procurement system, which was launched in Ukraine a few months ago (see the official page prozorro.gov.ua and the official Facebook page of the ProZorro Public Electronic Procurement System).

What are the features of this system and what are its advantages for users, in particular for private companies.

According to Wikipedia, Prozorro (Ukrainian: Прозоро - open, direct) is a systemic reform of the tender process in electronic public and public procurement in Ukraine. The system itself, and the copyright to the Prozorro system "are transferred to the people of Ukraine (the state)".

"Everyone sees everything" is the official slogan of the reform. After the tender is over, the electronic system provides all information on the submitted proposals of all participants, the decisions of the tender commission, all qualification documents, etc. This information is available to the general public through a convenient analytics module.

The system developers emphasize that the system guarantees a high level of trust between the main stakeholders during the reform, which are business, government, and civil society. They call equal access to the system for representatives of all three sectors a “unique association” - the Golden Triangle of Partnership.

Prozorro was actually created in accordance with the Law of Ukraine “On Public Procurement”, which entered into force on April 1, 2016 for central executive bodies and customers operating in certain areas of the economy; and from August 1, 2016 it enters into force for all customers.

The law introduces the mandatory implementation of procedures through the electronic system. An electronic auction system and a number of new concepts are also being introduced: “authorized electronic platform”, “electronic procurement system”, “centralized procurement organization”, “cloud computing system”. According to the law, the procurement procedure is simplified and the terminology in the field of procurement is transformed, approaching international standards (e.g., the term “competition” is replaced by the concept of “tender”, etc.).

Among the most significant advantages of the system are the transparency of the entire tender process; the inadmissibility of discrimination of applications and their objective assessment; simplicity and ease of application of tender procedures, the transition to electronic document management, reporting and analysis of all public procurement, private electronic platforms.

The authors of the system also assure that the main advantage of Prozorro will be the eradication and systematic prevention of corruption, which obviously should be carried out through open decision-making procedures and broad public involvement.

Well, Prozorro received the international award in the field of public procurement Public Sector Procurement Award for the creation and implementation of an electronic system with a unique architecture. Also, the fact that its development based on open source software was carried out in partnership with the government, business and the public and was administered by the world-renowned anti-corruption organization Transparency International adds confidence in the effectiveness of this mechanism.

Public leaders are already monitoring Prozorro's activities and publishing information on Facebook.

For example, PJSC Ukrgazvydobuvannya held the first 2 tenders for hydraulic fracturing (HF) achieving 27% savings from the previous cost of the work. A contractor from Germany (its Romanian branch) won the tender through e-procurement and will now increase gas production in Ukraine. See details at http://gas-oil.com.ua/stati/116-o-prozorro-i-gidrorazryvakh-plasta.html. Tenders can be viewed at - prozorro.gov.ua/tender/UA-2016-07-08-000154-b/prozorro.gov.ua/tender/UA-2016-07-06-000283-c/.

Also recently, Oschadbank announced the first quarter of a billion hryvnias of its purchases through Prozorro, having held 352 tenders with a planned amount of 251 million hryvnias. and received savings of 33.22 million hryvnias. Details are on the bank's official page: http://www.oschadbank.ua/ua/press-service/news/4335075/ю.

Thus, representatives of small businesses in Ukraine have a good opportunity to easily track the targeted use of funds paid to the budget in the form of taxes. Moreover, business entities have a real opportunity to participate in public procurement through an electronic system that offers fair and transparent procedures (see Information support of the system. infobox.prozorro.org. and Analytics module. bi.prozorro.org).