Social Values Based Procurement: An Innovative method to Combating Corruption in Procurement

Abstraksi

The separation of payer (community) and decider (legislative and executive power holders) creates difficulty in providing accountability in public monies use: how to make sure that every cent is spent as agreed and to report accurately to the public on how money was spent. As a respond to this problem, participatory budgeting method was initiated to provide greater community role in the development planning. Likewise, opentender.net provides more chances for community to monitor the use of public monies. It is hoped that these two initiatives reduced the occurrences of corruption cases in public procurement. However, the level of corruption is still skyrocketing. By November 2016, out of 366 of corruption cases, 142 cases (30%) related to procurement (Indonesian Corruption Watch) The Public Services Social Value Act (http://www.socialvalueuk.org/) requires people who commission public services to think about how they can secure wider social, economic and environmental benefits. It is intended to get more value for money out of procurement. Further, it encourages commissioners to talk to their local provider market or community to design better services, often finding new and innovative solutions to difficult problems. This paper argues that social value based procurement is an alternative way to combating corruption by giving way to social enterprises to play their role in providing services. The profit gained will then be reinvested into their social purpose. When public service is provided by social enterprise that re-invest the profit for social purposes, government can be rest assured no public monies are being corrupted.