INAI Announces Initiative to Enhance Project Transparency

The National Institute for Transparency, Information Access and Personal Data Protection (INAI) is preparing its Open Infrastructure project in collaboration with 21 institutions from 10 states. The project’s goal is to improve transparency surrounding large infrastructure projects, considered a long-standing issue in the Mexican contracting environment. 

Open Infrastructure proposes the adoption of the international Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS) and Open Contracting for Infrastructure Data Standard (OC4IDS), which entail free and open schemes for the publication of information and documentation during the development of an infrastructure project. The participants of the Open Infrastructure project are Organización Mexico Evalúa, The Infrastructure Transparency Initiative (CoST), the Open Contracting Partnership (OCP), Nuevo Leon’s Commission on Transparency and Information Access (COTAI) and the Commission for Open Government and Proactive Transparency (CGAyTP) from the National System for Transparency (SNT). 

Other than publication of free and open information regarding infrastructure project contracts,  INAI aims to foster public participation and monitoring on institutions that manage public resources, with the goal to increase their efficiency and enhance the quality of the works.

“Open Infrastructure is a point of reference that is making a difference and drawing attention to the open data agenda all over the world. There will be no turning back. In Mexico, people will see that we are working to positively impacting accountability. Having public works comply with the highest data standards is a reflection of a society and government that knows and understands the importance of publications, transparency and open data,” said Adrian Alcalá, Commissioner, INAI. 

The pilot will start in Baja California, Chiapas, Chihuahua, Mexico City, Jalisco, Nuevo Leon, Oaxaca, Queretaro and Michoacan. “We know that citizens in Mexico have little trust in authorities. This is an unfortunate issue often caused by governments that are not committed to transparency and accountability and have been associated with corruption,” said María Campos, Public Spending and Accountability Coordinator, Mexico Evalúa. 

According to OCP, governments around the world spend over US$13 trillion on contracting every year, though the information is not usually available for public consultation. Therefore, OCP created its OCDS documentation, with the key objective to support organizations in increasing contracting transparency.

In the 2021 International Transparency Report, Mexico ranked 124 of 180 regarding perceived corruption. The country is the ranked lowest among OECD members and placed 18 among the G20 members.