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Case study – Emergency buying: Colombia’s digital approach to COVID-19
Colombia Compra Eficiente | Agencia Nacional de Contratación Pública (The National
Agency for Public Procurement)
Figure 15: Colombia’s procurement agency has developed a range of digital tools to improve
competition, efficiency and transparency during the pandemic
Summary
• Existing public procurement tools can be adapted to meet new demands.
• Sharing open data is essential to allow public monitoring.
• Aggregated buying can help ensure value for money.
The problem
On 6 March 2020, Colombia recorded its first case of COVID-19, and joined the global scramble
to secure personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators and other essential supplies.
As well as facing the universal challenge of finding these items on the open market, the country
was also emerging from an epidemic of corruptionin public procurement (OAS, 2014).
Years of careful reform had made Colombia a pioneer in using digital tools to encourage
transparency and accountability. However, the extreme urgency of the pandemic was about to
put these systems to the test.
Procurement guidelines for smart sustainable cities | May 2023 47
