Oxford Insights
Summary
The Open Contracting Partnership (OCP) works around the world to transform public contracting in resource-rich countries through open contracting. In 2022-23,OCP needed to know what was working and where they could improve to better reach impact through the programme. We conducted the midterm and final evaluations of one of their primary programmes of work, using a human-centred approach which prioritised interviews with OCP’s partners in government, civil society and journalism, and the private sector. Our recommendations led to changes in OCP’s 2021 strategy and informed the creation of the 2024 strategy.
The challenge
The OCP is an international non-profit that works with governments around the world to help them publish data about their procurement processes, or how they spend their money. OCP also helps journalists and civil society organisations use this public data to expose corruption and hold their governments to account.
In 2023, OCP completed a five-year project funded by the BHP Foundation, “Translating resource revenues into effective services and infrastructure.” In many countries, extractive industries such as mining, oil, and gas are an important source of revenue for the economy. This money can be used to fund high-quality public services and effective infrastructure. However, issues such as corruption, mismanagement, and other vulnerabilities can mean that this revenue does not make its way back to local communities. OCP’s programme focussed on transforming the public contracting process in countries rich in natural resources, to help countries to better support their people.
OCP needed to know what they were doing that was working, and what they could do better. At Oxford Insights, we conducted both the midterm and final evaluations for OCP’s programme, giving recommendations about how to maximise their future impact. In the final evaluation, we also focussed on the ways OCP could help governments use open contracting to promote environmental sustainability and a transition to green energy, and explored the social impact of the programme’s work with local communities.
Our approach
In our programme evaluations, we prioritise taking a human-centred approach, centering the experiences and perspectives of the people impacted by the programme. In the midterm and final evaluations for OCP we:
- Reviewed the programme’s Theory of Change and other documentation to centre our analysis and recommendations around the programme’s activities and expected outcomes;
- Conducted over 100 interviews over the course of both evaluations with OCP’s partners around the world, including national and local level government officials working to open up procurement data, journalists and civil society organisations who received support from OCP to use procurement data for investigations, and private sector organisations;
- Coded interview findings using qualitative coding methodologies to identify trends among responses;
- shared evaluation findings with OCP’s broader implementation team and with interviewees in order to fill any gaps in the analysis; and
- Wrote a detailed final report for use by OCP’s internal team and a public summary report to share with the organisation’s partners.
Our impact
Following our midterm evaluation, OCP implemented many of our recommendations including investing in new data visualisation tools and implementing Theory of Change models in focus countries. OCP then invited us back to conduct the final evaluation for the programme, where we evaluated the impact of many of the changes we had recommended two and a half years previously.
Following our final evaluation, our recommendations were used to inform OCP’s 2024 Strategy.
Grid image by Moritz Kindler at Unsplash.
