The COVID-19 outbreak in 2020 generated a massive international response in terms of vaccine development and funding of vaccine purchase, delivery and distribution throughout the world.

Because of the emergency, many traditional mechanisms for procurement and oversight were bypassed, creating opportunities for fraud and corruption.

One way to manage the problem without slowing the response was to adopt independent third-party monitoring to ensure the integrity of the process and the effectiveness of the results.

Civil society organizations (CSOs) have demonstrated the impact of citizen engagement time and again. The Partnership for Transparency has supported more than 250 projects and 100 CSOs in 50 countries over 25 years with more than 85% of the projects realizing their objectives.

Governments do not reform themselves.

It takes the actions and persistence of citizen groups to improve transparency and accountability. And governments worldwide are restricting the independence and effectiveness of civil society. How can civil society make a difference despite the constraints?

One example comes from Argentina.

The Latin America and Caribbean Region of the World Bank was worried that their funding for the COVID-19 response was vulnerable to misappropriation. They asked the PTF to design a program where CSOs could monitor the procurement, storage, distribution and delivery of vaccines and demonstrate the effectiveness and integrity of the response. The PTF developed a proposal for Argentina with a respected local partner Poder Ciudadano, Citizen Power.

Resistance to independent monitoring came from every direction.

The local office of the World Bank said the government would never accept this approach. The Ministry of Health, always opaque in sharing information, turned down every request for information. And the suppliers of vaccine, the pharmaceutical companies, demanded secrecy in their contracts. The public sector, the private sector and the funding agency all resisted independent monitoring and making information public.

What did Poder Ciudadano do?

Poder Ciudadano made as much information as possible available to the public on which vaccines were purchased, at what cost, delivered and distributed in a coherent way in line with the priorities of the national response plan.

It developed a six-point process.

1. Information gathering—Poder mined the websites of the multiple government agencies responsible for vaccine procurement, international suppliers such as PAHO, funding agencies, and CSOs in other countries with more open information systems on vaccine purchases.
2. Information validation—Poder verified that the information gathered was valid and representative and could be shared with the public.
3. Information sharing—Poder created a website—the Observatory—that was the single-most important source of information for the public in Argentina, and resulted in part in having the MOH improve its own website.
4. Building networks—Poder worked systematically with other non-profits, the media and the academic community to build coalitions to demand more transparency and accountability in the COVID response.
5. Engage constructively—Poder worked with groups within the MOH, with supreme audit institutions and other government agencies to promote transparency and demonstrate the value to civil society engagement.
6. Litigate—Where necessary, Poder challenged in court the resistance of the authorities to making information public.

The results were encouraging.

The Supreme Audit authority castigated the MOH publicly on its secrecy, based in no small measure on the information provided by Poder. The MOH improved its website. Issues like favoritism in distribution were identified and publicized. Ultimately, more than 90% of the population was vaccinated.

When the COVID emergency subsided, Poder shifted its focus to calendar vaccine procurement.

The MOH was much more forthcoming and collaborative. All eight FOI requests were answered. CSOs were invited to assist the MOH in combatting misinformation on vaccinations and the serious decline in vaccination rates. Transparency in vaccine procurement became noticeably better.