Apr182023

The Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency participates in the Forum for Transparency in Public Procurement of the Local Administration

#TrainingAVAF

The Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency participated, on April 17, in the “Forum on transparency in public procurement of the Local Administration” held in Madrid, promoted and organized by the Laboratorio de la Contratación, in collaboration with the Madrid City Council.

One of the main reasons for holding this Forum was to address, from a purely practical sphere, the most relevant aspects and challenges of local public procurement, both from the perspective of Local Administration and private operators, as well as, the formulas and tools available to be able to undertake it and provide citizens with services of the highest possible quality.

In the Forum, the legislative news and the news of the risk areas in terms of local public procurement were presented, the preparation of the Check list as an essential tool for the preparation of the specifications, underfinancing and increased costs of contracting will be discussed. local government, as well as the detection and correction of fraud, corruption and conflicts of interest in the local Administration.

It was attended by speakers with extensive knowledge in the field such as contracting specialists, elected directors, general secretaries and presidents who are part of organizations such as Advisory Councils, the Administrative Court of Contracts, or the Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency.

The inaugural session of the Forum was in charge of Mrs. Silvia Saavedra – Councilor for Territorial Coordination, Transparency and Citizen Participation in the Madrid City Council.

The representative of the Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency, Mrs. Irene Bravo Rey, shared a table with Mr. Alfonso Arévalo Gutiérrez, President of the Administrative Court of Contracts of the Madrid Assembly, and Mrs. Sara Aranda Plaza, General Coordinator of Districts, Transparency and Citizen Participation in Madrid City Council, and focused his intervention on the issues that were raised, among which it is worth highlighting the list of the main risks contrary to the structure that usually arise during the life of a contract (conflict of interest, abuse of the figure of unjust enrichment, lack of planning of the contractual activity or lack of transparency) highlighting that such risks and factors may be useful for each institution to prepare its own catalogs or self-assessment of risks.

She stressed the collaboration protocols that are being signed between the AVAF and certain Valencian public institutions, to facilitate compliance with state and regional legal obligations (especially those of the new Law 2/2023 on informants and the Autonomous Law of the Community of Valenciana of Transparency and Good Governance), contributing to the implementation in each entity of separate integrity frameworks.

Her speech ended by recalling that the public service mission of any public entity is the achievement of the general interest, and must protect all kinds of public funds from any kind of irregularity, and not limit itself to protecting only funds from the EU from eminently criminal irregularities, articulating preventive frameworks as content of its own integrity plan and/or plan of anti-fraud measures. For this reason, he pointed out, the Agency approved the AVAF Guide: The Public Integrity Plan: Roadmap and Facilitating Annexes which, together with other materials, can be consulted on its website.

Apr62023

The Association of Local Administration Computer Technicians (ATIAL) and the Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency collaborate in training for the deployment of internal reporting channels

#TrainingAVAF

On April 5, the Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency has given a training session for ATIAL staff and ICT public employees who implement the different work tools in the Local Administration.

The conference was entitled “#ATIALVirtual. Deployment of an internal reporting channel in 60 minutes”, within its monthly ATIALVirtualTIC programming, with the aim of responding to one of the obligations derived from Law 2/2023 for all public administrations, such as the implementation of internal information for the communication of infractions of the legal system before the term of implementation of June 13, 2023.

In the training activity, the technical aspects of the Agency’s Complaints Mailbox were exposed as an external channel of the independent Informant Protection Authority (art. 16 Law 2/2023) and the deployment and configuration to be used as an internal channel of a city council (Articles 5 and 7 Law 2/2023).

The Agency uses a free software platform, Globaleaks, for the management of the external reporting channel since 2018, which it offers to the different administrations, presenting the free software to implement the internal information systems for the management of reports, with all the security guarantees. and confidentiality established by Law 2/2023. And from the experience of five years of working with this software, the requirements, how to implement, configure and manage it were revealed, all with a live demonstration of a practical case.

On this occasion, the training was given by personnel from the Agency’s ICT service: Javier Alamá and Maribel Valero, head of the ICT Service and head of the IT Coordination unit, respectively.

73 people participated in the online activity, ATIAL partners and public personnel at the service of the local administration of the Valencian Community.

The attendees have shown interest in the technical part of the system, raising some specific cases and have expressed concern regarding the management procedure of the system that each administration must approve, as well as whether the Provincial Councils were going to provide service to some local entities.

The Agency thanks ATIAL for organizing this training day, as well as for the interest shown in facilitating the implementation of zero-cost reporting channels in local administrations, thus helping to create a culture of public integrity and rejection of fraud and corruption. In this case, with the implementation of the necessary tools to receive information on possible infringements, and thus meet one of the obligations derived from Law 2/2023.

If you wish to have specialized training in integrity and corruption prevention in your public administration, do not hesitate to write to training@antifraucv.es.

Apr52023

The Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency and the SGISE sign a protocol to launch the complaint boxes and the Integrity Plan

Valencia, April 5, 2023.- The president of the Societat Valenciana de Gestió Integral de Serveis d’Emergències (SIGSE), José María Ángel Batalla, and the director of the  Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency, Joan Llinares, have signed a collaboration protocol between both institutions that will help promote the Integrity Plan in which the Emergency Service is working.

Within the general lines of the Integrity Plan, the implementation of complaint mailboxes, both internal and external, is contemplated, thus complying with the requirement of the new Law 2/2023 regulating the protection of people who report on regulatory infractions and the fight against corruption.

With this Law published in the BOE on February 21, the European Directive 1937/2019, on the protection of persons who report breaches of Union Law, better known as the Whistleblowers Directive, is transposed into Spanish law.

The SIGSE will enable as an external channel of denunciations the mailbox of denunciations of the Agency which will be visible on its website. This mailbox guarantees the confidentiality of whistleblowers as well as allowing the possibility of being able to make complaints anonymously.

The collaboration between both institutions will also extend to other actions and activities such as those of a training nature where emergency service personnel will receive training in aspects related to the promotion of ethics and public integrity, as well as the prevention and detection of situations constituting fraud and corruption.

The SGISE Integrity Plan will contain, among others, an institutional declaration of integrity; incorporating institutional integrity into strategic planning; enabling a specific internal whistleblowing channel and connecting to the Agency’s external whistleblowing channel; the regulation and management of conflicts of interest; the training of personnel in integrity or the promotion and dissemination of the culture of ethics and public integrity.

The president of SIGSE José María Ángel, stressed that “through this framework agreement the public company will intensify actions to apply  the practices of transparency and good governance in  the entity that manages the forest fire service”.

José María Ángel has shown his satisfaction after signing this agreement.  “We will walk together in order to achieve a double objective. The first is to provide greater transparency to management, because that is a basic and inalienable principle  in any activity related to public entities and bodies.” Secondly, he continued, “this agreement also guarantees greater access to  citizen information  to  these entities and, as a consequence, we bring our management closer to society.”

For his part, the director of the Agency, Joan Llinares, hashighlighted “the  importance of signing a collaboration protocol between the Agency and SIGSE, the entity responsible for extinguishing forest fires that will allow compliance with the new Law on the protection of persons reporting corruption and the consolidation of higher levels of ethics and public integrity”