Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) are key actors in the public procurement system, safeguarding it from threats and ensuring its efficiency and integrity. This is particularly relevant given that public procurement is a key pillar of public service delivery, representing on average approximately 12% of GDP across OECD countries. Threats and risks affecting the public procurement function can have significant consequences on the quality and quantity of public services that governments can provide.
In recent years, SAIs and other oversight bodies have increasingly explored the use of data to enhance their oversight activities. In the public procurement sphere, this has been enabled by the digital transformation of public procurement system. This transformation goes beyond traditional e-procurement systems and adopts a more holistic perspective, including greater integration with public financial management systems and alignment with digital government strategies.
In Portugal, the Court of Auditors (Tribunal de Contas, TdC) is the Supreme Audit Institution of the country. To fulfil its mission, the TdC conducts many audits related to public procurement processes (ex ante, concomitant and ex post) every year, requiring extensive human and financial resources. Furthermore, the dynamics of how governments manage and oversee public procurement are changing, including a greater focus on financial and non-financial outcomes. This change requires the TdC to keep pace and enhance its audit selection to ensure its approach is both efficient and effective, investing its finite audit resources in areas that pose the greatest risks in public procurement.
Recognising the need to adapt and innovate, the TdC embarked on a broad digital transformation, illustrated most recently in its 2023-2025 Strategic Plan for Digital Transformation (Digital Strategy). The plan underscores the TdC’s ambitions and needs to strengthen risk assessment in public procurement and embrace the opportunities and challenges posed by digitalisation and artificial intelligence. This exercise is not just a one-off technological upgrade, but a strategic shift towards a risk-based and data-driven approach to targeting audit resources, focusing on strengthening the control framework to enhance the efficiency and transparency of public procurement spending in Portugal.
This digital transformation agenda relies also on the collaboration with key public entities and data owners in the country, including the Institute of Public Procurement, Real Estate and Construction (IMPIC).
This report explores opportunities and challenges concerning an initiative of the TdC to strengthen its use of data and advanced analytics for assessing risks in public procurement. It offers insights into financial and non-financial risks that are relevant for the TdC’s oversight of the public procurement system in Portugal, as well as data sources it can leverage to enhance its data-driven risk assessments.
The action was funded by the European Union via the Technical Support Instrument, and implemented by the OECD, in co-operation with the Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support of the European Commission.
The report was approved by the Public Governance Committee on 27 June 2024 and prepared for publication by the Secretariat.