Page 142 - Procurement guidelines for smart sustainable cities - A U4SSC deliverable

The launch event for the latest version of the national platform attracted hundreds of attendees
from government and civil society, and included an expert panel discussion with representatives
from the local chapter of Transparency International and the Inter-American Development Bank.

SESNA’s hands-on approach, supporting pilot projects and the open-source tools, manuals and
guides to help those generating and standardizing data at local level, should see significant
quantities of quality data starting to reach the PDN over the next year.

Challenges

The PDN has some way to go before data for all six “Systems” is being collected from all areas of

government. As the Follow-up Report on the OECD Integrity Review of Mexicostates:

“The [NACS] has the potential to be a ‘game changer’ in Mexico’s fight against corruption.
[However...] the interoperability of existing information systems present significant technical
challenges”

As Pablo Villarreal, Head of the PDN Unit, points out:

“We want everything to be ‘transparent’. This is great, but transparency without purpose is not
useful. [...] To move on, there needs to be a real drive to open and standardize data, and a true
political commitment”.

Combining the political commitment with a tenacious focus on delivering technical solutions, is a
challenge that still faces the SESNA team in order to get the PDN fully up and running with quality
usable data.

Next steps

Building on the current momentum, SESNA have a busy schedule ahead to complete the pilot with
Chihuahua, Jalisco and Oaxaca, as well as to make more tools available to government agencies
via the Mercado Digital Anticorrupción Library and expand support to states and federal entities
to provide more and better data to the platform.

The GDS Global Digital Marketplace Programme continues to support the SESNA PDN team over
the coming months and into 2021, laying the foundations to scale the work to all 32 states. This
will help Mexico to have a truly national view on and ability to mitigate, corruption and fraud risks
and to implement the obligations of the NACS Law.

128 Procurement guidelines for smart sustainable cities | May 2023