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Within UCMC’s collaborative approach, a best practice is to engage government officials, the contractor, and community members in a committee to address the findings of the monitoring process. Each contract monitoring intervention has clear reporting or grievance handling mechanism vis-à-vis private or public sector actors.As a responsible counterpart, UCMC enters into transparent and binding partnerships with these two actors and shares well-documented reports to improve the performance of contracts. In this regard, The Coalition distances itself from other CSO for whom public shaming is the default option and make an irresponsible use of public information. UCMC is aware that, in order to be effective, these reporting mechanisms must lead to concrete actions that address the identified problems. For The Coalition closing the loop means that problems are resolved to the satisfaction of affected stakeholders.

Interventions in this area conceive of information disclosure and access to information as a prerequisite for public accountability. For the time being, The Coalition has focused on strategically engaging key government agencies and stakeholders to reach ad hoc agreements to disclose information on a limited amount of contracts. These agreements – in the case of the health cluster it was enshrined in the form of an MOU –, have allowed the coalition to pre-test the citizen monitoring tools. However, in the next five years The Coalition sees itself making a key contribution towards contract transparency at the entire contracting chain: planning, tendering, contract execution, and closing. The UCMC is fully aware more consultation with key stakeholders is needed to ensure maximum levels of transparency while making sure that information is not disclosed in a way that can harm the competitive positions of the companies or divulge other confidential information.

This involves empowering citizens to use the information and monitor all stages of the contracting process from the awarding to the monitoring and evaluation of contract implementation through making information publicly accessible in user-friendly formats and through building the capacity of civil society to use the information.For each sector the UCMC creates a specific monitoring tool tailored for the target projects, including tools intended to monitor compliance with government programs. On top of the public contract monitoring activities, the agriculture cluster is applying a tool to monitor activities within NAADS, the health cluster is monitoring medicine stock outs, and the energy and extractives cluster is applying a tool to monitor resettlement and compensation processes in the extractive sector. Community monitors to monitor compliance with national laws and international standards are using the latter tool.
In order to guarantee the sustainability of these interventions, The Coalition carefully selects and trains the monitors on open contracting principles and how to employ the monitoring tools. Within a train-the-trainer methodology, these trainees will then become trainers themselves, thereby guaranteeing the sustainability of the intervention. Once the The Coalition has finished its intervention, the vibrant network of monitors continues to carry out monitoring work and engaging local authorities to promote better service delivery at the district level.

UCMC is advocating for reforms that will guarantee access to contract information and third party monitoring, as well as mainstreaming the open contracting agenda across government agencies and oversight bodies. The Coalition is mobilizing a core group of Members of Parliament who can be champions in these reform areas. Advocacy will also aim at operationalizing article 43 of the Access to Information Law, which requires sector Ministers to report to Parliament on how information requests to respective Ministries, Departments and Agencies under them are dealt with. This initiative is expected to motivate Parliament to enforce this provision, which will in turn strengthen access and usage of contract information by civil society and citizen groups.

Finally, There are at least three categories of beneficiaries from these sets of interventions. The primary beneficiaries are the ordinary men, women, youth and children who would benefit from improvements in the delivery of public services in the target sectors. The secondary beneficiaries are partner Government of Uganda agencies that are responsible for ensuring the effective delivery of public services to the citizens and taxpayers. The tertiary beneficiaries are the development partners who provide financial and other forms of support to Government of Uganda towards the implementation of service delivery programmes and projects.