Reasonableness of the policy on implementing a social order during a tender

In 2024, the pilot testing of the mechanisms of the Law on Social Ordering was completed, which makes it advisable to assess the validity of the regions’ policies on the implementation of social ordering. The article examines the practice of using the competition. The study presents approaches to assessing the validity of the policy on the implementation of social ordering during the competition, including indicators that characterize the emergence of competition: the number of participants in the competition; the presence or absence of non-governmental organizations as participants in the competition; the presence of multiple winners in the competition; and the presence or absence of an organization that has been granted the right to provide a significant volume of services based on the results of the competition. The information on the tenders held in order to fulfill the social order in 2024 has been summarized, and based on its analysis, the validity of the policy has been assessed when conducting the tender, taking into account the above-mentioned approach. In 4/5 of the conducted competitions, there was a low level of policy validity or an unjustified policy due to the recognition of the competition as invalid due to the presence of only one application or the absence of applications. The results of the analysis suggest that the current use of the competition is formal. Public institutions do not submit applications for participation in competitions if non-governmental organizations submit such applications, and vice versa. In fact, this tool is not used to create competition, but rather to legally provide non-governmental organizations with subsidies for services or to allocate corresponding volumes to public institutions on a non-competitive basis.