The Municipality of Tirana has recently opened a tender of 12 million lekë (~€90,000) for the creation of a new website and an intranet for the municipality. The project is supposed to be finished within 4 months and should be maintained for 4 years.
According to the description of the tender,
Through this project, the Municipality of Tirana will improve the offering of services and information for the citizen, for business, interest groups, but also the processes and functioning with the administration. At the same time, transparency about the activity of the municipality will be improved and there will be a real-time communication and interaction with the community.
It is unclear whether the new website of the municipality will indeed improve its dismal track record in transparency, as it systematically hides information about construction and renovation projects, sessions of the municipal council, and public hearings. Earlier this year, municipal director for urban planning Joni Baboçi claimed – erroneously – there existed no law on public consultation.
Furthermore, nearly all IT platforms proposed by the Rama government, such as Transparenca, Jokorrupsionit, E-Albania, Shqipëria që duam, have cost large sums of public money, only to be abandoned by the government a few years later. There is no guarantee that Veliaj’s handout to one his clients will not go the same way.
