SHORT CHRONOLOGY
The chronology of the project is divided into three phases.
First phase: May 2008 – August 2008 includes an audit of selected policies of
the town
A vote of the Town Council in May 2008 which, based on a proposal of the Mayor Andrej Hrnciar, allocated 23,000 EUR from the town budget for this project presents the first phase and the official start of the project establishing the anticorruption strategies in the town of Martin. In the months of July and August, the town, in cooperation with the Transparency International Slovensko (hereinafter TIS), was thus able to launch the first phase that consisted of a diagnosis of an existing state of corruption possibilities – the level of transparency – and a free hand in the decision making by the municipality. The outcome of the audit was a 60-page document titled “The Report from the audit of the policies of the town of Martin”, in which TIS identified 17 key policies that might have an effect on the extent of corruption in the town.
Second phase: September 2008 – April 2009 includes preparation and approval
of anticorruption measures in selected town policies
The second phase introduced the processing of the actual suggestions of anticorruption standards. During the second phase, a number of meetings and workshops were carried out, whose aim was to define the individual anticorruption measures. In this phase, a part of the project carried on with the already running project named “Digital Town” – the e-Government concept on a municipality level – and e-Democracy, which, among others, also brings free internet to citizens of the town, full digitalization of the Town Council meetings and gradual introduction of intelligent electronic application forms. The outcome of the second phase of the project was a 130-page long document titled “The Proposal of the anticorruption measures for the Town of Martin”, which contains a set of anticorruption recommendations including suggestions for procedure guidelines and town laws and regulations. In February 2009, this material was introduced to the Town Council’s committees during a special assembly. The material contains a preface, a methodology of how the measures had been put together, and an overview of realized activities of TIS during the second phase of the project as well as proposed anticorruption measures for the town of Martin. In April 2009, the Mayor Andrej Hrnciar called for a special assembly of the Town Council that dealt exclusively with an implementation of the measures resulting from the audit of TIS. The meeting was broadcasted live via town television and on the town’s own website www.martin.sk.
Third phase: May 2009 – Up-to-date has included the implementation of
accepted measures in everyday life
In June 2009, the town of Martin commenced the Ethical Code for all employees of the Town Hall. The main objective is to define the rules for an impartial execution of work while specifying the rights and responsibilities of the town employees as basics for building the trust of the public in their work. Since June 2009, the hiring of employees in the Town Hall as well as other town organizations has been executed according to the procedure that specifies the selection of members to a committee that decides who will fill vacant job positions, which helps prevent conflicts of interest of its members. The procedure also specifies ways of informing about vacant job positions, the actual course of selecting the candidate and informing not only about the results but the whole process of hiring a new employee. On July 4, 2009, the town launched a new domain www.transparentnemesto.sk. An electronic auction house martin.ebit.sk, via which the first electronic auctions were carried out on the same day, is also part of the domain. So far we have 186 registered companies waiting for our electronic auctions to take place. We have already executed more than 100 electronic auctions with 257 participants who placed 941 bids; and due to the way we do public procurement we saved almost 300,000 EUR, which represents asaving of 23%. This makes Martin’s anti-corruption package not only a remedy for corruption, but it also effectively eases the impact of the economic crisis on the municipality budget. Since the beginning of 2010, I followed up on new activities on monthly basis such the Open day in my office, where I received 125 visitors, and the Day of the town borrows. In 2010, we carried out a massive campaign to inform our citizens about a tool they can use to monitor us and to encourage them to do so on regular basis. We have launched the Map of electronic auctions. Lately we improved the way we publish database of town contracts, invoices and orders through intuitive tool the citizens can use to sort, filter and search data in database. In January 2011, after an initial testing, we use an electronic market research for low cost procurement in range from 400 to 2,999 EUR... At the beginning I have declared that start of this project is only a beginning and there is a long way in front of us with many steps to take. This is still true and we still work not only on improvements for old but also on new measurements.
