E-Procurement as a Way to Protect the Public Interest

Abstract

Introduction: the paper is devoted to the study of legal mechanisms in the area of public procurement, which can ensure the protection of the public interest and respect for fundamental human rights and freedoms. Modern international law requires that the public procurement regulations include the standards for the protection of fundamental human rights. There are serious loopholes in the Russian procurement legislation regarding the application of human rights protection standards in the performance of contractual obligations. For this purpose, the author reveals the hierarchy of interests of all the subjects of legal relations in the area of procurement and the main ways of violations of human rights and the public interest. By means of methods of scientific knowledge, first of all, comparative jurisprudence, the system of public procurement in comparison with the contract system of the USA was considered. The paper also uses specific methods of scientific knowledge, including: system-structural, formallogical, as well as special legal methods of normative interpretation. Results: it is pointed out that the lowest-price competition often encourages States to support unscrupulous contractors who violate the fundamental human rights, fail to comply with the occupational safety standards and pay low wages. In particular, in Russia, the law does not allow obliging customers to only enter into a contract with those procurement participants who are ready to ensure compliance with the labor rights. In such a situation, human rights could only be protected by ensuring transparency in the procurement process. In turn, achieving transparency of procurement is only possible with the use of digital technologies. Conclusions: according to the results of the study, it should be assumed that the current procurement rules in Russia at each stage need to be improved in terms of filling in the loopholes in the human rights procurement standards aimed at ensuring respect for fundamental human rights. The active use of IT-technologies is required for the development and implementation of self-executing agreements in a single information system.