Citizens, journalists, and civil society organisations in the Republic of Moldova can now easily investigate public procurements carried out by over 900 local authorities using a newly launched Procurement Needle platform developed by Constantin Copaceanu, a Fellow of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership Civil Society Fellowship programme. The platform aggregates data from the primary sources of public information and allows users to explore connections between procurement data and public officials’ income declarations, thus bringing an unprecedented level of transparency into Moldovan public spending.
Constantin Copaceanu, a co-founder of Moldovan civic tech CSO ‘Implicare Plus”, created the Procurement Needle platform within his 2024 Eastern Partnership Civil Society Fellowship to address the need for efficient and accessible tools to monitor public procurement in Moldova. “Public procurement transparency is essential for accountability. With Procurement Needle, we are empowering citizens, journalists, and CSOs with the tools they need to uncover irregularities and promote integrity in public spending,” says Constantin.
The Procurement Needle platform collects real-time data from three primary sources (actelocale.gov.md, mtender.gov.md and ani.md) and enables seamless cross-data searches through multiple datasets. These two features allow users to easily investigate connections between public procurement contracts, members of local procurement committees, tender winners, and income and assets declarations of public officials engaged in the procurement procedures.
The platform offers free access and already covers over 900 local governments and consolidates information on more than 100,000 public procurement contracts and 376,000 declarations of income and assets. By improving public access to procurement data, Procurement Needle fosters transparency, encourages responsible governance, and enables investigative journalism and watchdog activism in Moldova.
Procurement Needle platform is part of the European Union’s broader effort to support civil society activists in the Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries through its EaP Civil Society Fellowship programme implemented by the EU-funded “Eastern Partnership Civil Society Facility” project.
For further information or more details about “Procurement Needle”, please contact Constantin Copaceanu, Project Manager, AO “Implicare Plus”, [email protected].
