Governments around the world spend approximately $13 trillion per year through public procurement. The goods and services provided are critical to delivering public services and infrastructure.
Public procurement is also a tool to promote competition, innovation, and inclusive social and economic growth by providing a level playing field of opportunities to suppliers. Unfortunately, public procurement is also one of a government’s key risks for inefficiency, mismanagement and corruption.
Closed and opaque approaches to procurement are flawed. Unexamined custom and practice, for example outdated processes or habitually reusing established contracts, limits visibility, reduces competition, and stifles innovation.
This report documents a growing body of evidence that open procurement is improving outcomes across many countries and sectors – not just in terms of increased public trust through transparency, but in terms of: increased competition; increased supplier diversity; leading to better value for money and better support for economic development. This report focuses on technology procurement, documenting examples of how more open procurement in the IT sector is contributing to better outcomes globally and highlighted in our case studies from Chile, Colombia, Australia and the UK.
