Evidence from government contracts around the globe

This talk will first outline the weaknesses of public data on government contracts across Europe and how a recent large-scale research project unlocked troves of such administrative data for promoting civil society oversight of government. It will also offer insights into ongoing research about how electronic government tools such as online tender advertisement can combat corruption in weak governance developing country contexts.

Speaker bio

Mihály Fazekas completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2014 pioneering novel Big Data methods to measure and understand high-level corruption, state capture, and state capacity in Central- and Eastern Europe. Now, he works at the University of Cambridge as the scientific coordinator of the Horizon 2020 funded project DIGIWHIST. This large-scale research project uses a Big Data approach to measuring governance through digital tools, especially in public procurement in 32 European countries. He also serves as a co-Principal Investigator on the British Academiy/DFID funded research project looking at anticorruption in development aid funded procurement. Mihály also directs a think-tank, Government Transparency Institute, specializing in using Big Data to understand government performance. He has experience in both quantitative and qualitative methods in diverse fields such as economics, public policy, and political science acquired in numerous research projects. He has worked for the European Commission, OECD, World Bank, RAND Europe, Ecole Nationale d’Administration, Hertie School of Governance, and Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Together with Bence Tóth and István János Tóth, he was awarded on two occasions the first prize in the U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre competition for the best new proxy measure of corruption.

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