Innovation laboratory in public procurement

Working group at Medialab-Prado coordinated by Civio .

The objective of  the Public Procurement Innovation Laboratory  is to jointly define a more transparent public procurement model   (focused on accountability to citizens, rather than just bidding companies) and aimed at  preventing corruption  (incorporating methods and technologies of analysis, control and monitoring to detect and avoid irregularities).

The Public Procurement Innovation Laboratory focuses its objectives on  four working subgroups :

• Group 1. Public administrations, officials and public offices. In search of the perfect recruitment transparency portal. We analyze the best examples and practices in procurement advertising to define what the perfect public procurement portal would look like. With international experts, as well as with specialists in contracting from public entities that have already taken steps forward in this area.
• Group 2. Academia, public employees and civil society. How to detect corruption . We establish a list of red flags, alarm signals that warn of possible irregularities and that allow us to take a step forward in monitoring recruitment.
• Group 3. Developer is and data scientists. Tools to put everything you have learned into practice. We look for the best technologies and tools to put into practice what we have learned in the previous two points: how to create the best recruitment transparency portal and how to detect red flags. On the basis of reuse and free code, we try to create a prototype and / or a list of tools capable of applying everything we have learned.
• Group 4. Data journalists. How to take advantage of hiring information. We learn to work with hiring data and extract the most possible juice from it to create journalistic stories.

Dozens of  national and international experts  participated in this initiative: professionals from the public sector, specialists in contracting in the private sector, in the prevention of corruption, law, technology, technical advisers to parliamentary groups, civil society, journalists and the general public.

One of the results of this working group is the drafting of the  Contratopedia: Basic Guide to the Public Sector Contract Law for beginners .

All the information on the group's work is contained in this report , and also on this website .