The National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) conducted an anti-corruption expertise of the draft resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine on awarding the CMU Prize for the development and implementation of innovative technologies.
Based on the results of the expertise, a number of corruption-prone factors were identified, including:
- restrictions on the deadlines for submitting finalized documents;
- lack of a list of grounds for deciding not to award the Prize;
- lack of deadlines for the selection and expert evaluation of competitive proposals, and for submitting justified proposals;
- creation of conditions for personal contact between representatives of nominated author teams and the Expert Group.
Specifically, according to the draft Resolution, in case of equal or similar total scores, the final decision is made at an extended meeting of the Expert Group, to which authorized representatives of the nominated author teams may be invited. This creates conditions for providing an undue advantage due to the possibility of personal contact between a representative of the nominated author team and the members of the Expert Group.
The NACP, in its anti-corruption expert evaluation conclusion, provided 9 recommendations to eliminate potential corruption abuses.
As a result of established cooperation between specialists from the NACP and the Ministry of Education and Science (the developer), the draft resolution was significantly revised, considering all the provided recommendations. The Government adopted this resolution.
What was successfully changed?
- unjustified restrictions on the deadlines for submitting revised applications were eliminated;
- a clear basis for the decision not to award the Prize was defined;
- deadlines were established for the selection and expert evaluation of competitive proposals, as well as for submitting substantiated proposals to the Committee;
- the possibility for authorized representatives of nominated author collectives to present competitive proposals "through direct participation" at the Expert Group meeting, as well as the invitation of such representatives to the extended Expert Group meeting for final decision-making, was eliminated;
- a mandatory justification for the necessity of conducting additional scientific and scientific-technical expertise was added;
- the phrasing regarding "close in value" total scores was removed.
Previously, the NACP conducted an anti-corruption expert evaluation and provided recommendations for eliminating corruption factors in draft resolutions regarding the procedure for submitting and considering applications from internally displaced persons for the provision of residential real estate, as well as the procedure for storing assets managed by the Asset Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA).
