Project ‘ Public Contracts Publication: Monitoring, Analysis and Public Control’ aims to increase quality of public contracts online publication and to increase accountability of public bodies. It intends to do so by means of two main activities: 1) Evaluation of current practices as well as mentoring and 2) creation of an analytical portal identifying potentially problematic contracts.

Project’s aim is to keep anti-corruption momentum in rural Slovakia following the recent November 2010 local election through implementation of anti-corruption packages in a selected village and thereby setting an example for others to follow; adjusting anti-corruption ideas and approaches to rural settings; and advocating and promoting anti-corruption tools to rural politicians.

The network between the Slovak and Hungarian local governments as well as between Slovak and Hungarian anti-corruption institutions will be strengthened. Among others the capacity for good governance as well as civic control of the local government spending will be enhanced by providing monitoring tools to citizens and journalist.

The Conference opens Jens Wandel (UNDP) who devote to the significance of Anti-Corruption Day and the role of the United Nations Convention against Corruption. Minister of Justice of the SR Lucia Žitňanská presents the Government approach to fighting corruption in Slovakia: policies, tools, monitoring, threats and challenges. Michael Roberts from British Embassy in Slovakia comes with the theme: Corruption: An Outsider’s Perspective and in the following block Gabriel Sipos, Director of TIS, presents for the first time an overview of Global Corruption Barometer in Slovakia. Pavel Nechala (Legal Advisor of TIS) presents the results of TIS analysis titled How Statutes of Limitations Affect the Prosecution of Corruption in Slovakia. The conference concludes Director-General of Microsoft Slovakia, Peter Hrabovsky, who introduces a case study on the subject of whistleblowing in the private company.

The project is devoted to the examination and promoting of transparency processes of public procurement and concessions in Slovakia. Every year, there are preparing indexes of measuring the degree of transparency in public procurement in Slovakia, conducted the research of providing services in local governments in Slovakia, decisions of European Court of Justice were examined in the field of public procurement and their possible application in the Slovak practice were discussed. Nowadays, the investigation of impact of the electronic auction for the procurement and efficiency is ongoing and continues to monitor cases in the award of public contracts and concessions in Slovakia.

On 10th December 2009 a conference took place entitled Challenges of the Slovak justice system and opportunities for improving the existing situation, which was devoted to the current problems of the judiciary and possible solutions to overcome them and increase the professionalism, impartiality and quality of justice in Slovakia. Vice-President of the Constitutional Court CR Pavel Holländer, lawyer and educator Radoslav Procházka, Judge Paul Springer from Siegen, Germany, Jan Dubovcová from the District Court in Banská Bystrica and others spoke at the Conference.

The project was focused on analysis of laws and comparison of whistleblower protection mechanisms (notifiers of unfair practices in the workplace) in eight EU countries and identifying the best practices in this area. A summary of these practices will help to Slovakia and make the best whistleblower protection legislation.

The project aims to increase awareness of public authorities, particularly in preventing corruption in public procurement. The project carried out training for staff in the public and private sector in order to familiarize participants with the risk of corruption in public procurement, the tools for their elimination, as well as examples of good practice in increasing the transparency in public procurement procedures.

The project conducted training for buyers entitled Transparency and integrity in public procurement, which introduced a whole set of examples of good procurement practices inspired by foreign, and also by he Slovak experience.

TIS project monitored and analyzed the decisions of the central administration regarding the provision of subsidies to municipalities – also in terms of transparency and partisan inclinations, and consequently promoted the proposed recommendations aimed at enhancing the transparent and objective decision on the allocation of public resources to local governments.