Mapping Corruption Risks in Public Procurement Through Data

The project applied big data methods to over six million procurement contracts across ten countries – revealing how institutional controls and political context shape corruption risks and supporting local efforts to strengthen oversight.

The project built on earlier research that developed an innovative method for using big data to assess corruption risks in aid-funded procurement. The original approach combined procurement contract data from major donors with political and institutional variables to understand how both donor control mechanisms and recipient country contexts influenced corruption risk – and how those factors interacted.

In this second phase, the research team extended the database to include national procurement data from ten countries, covering over six million contracts awarded between 2010 and 2018. The dataset spanned a mix of developing and developed economies – including Chile, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

Where procurement data quality was limited, the project shifted focus to qualitative insights and local engagement – supporting efforts to improve data infrastructure and enabling civil society and government actors to analyse risks using open-source tools. In doing so, the project combined methodological innovation with practical impact, helping to expand the reach and utility of corruption risk analysis in public procurement systems worldwide.

Key Findings

• Corruption risks in public procurement were higher in countries with short-term political horizons and limited state capacity.
• Partisan favouritism was more likely to occur where political actors had captured institutions responsible for awarding and monitoring public contracts – enabling them to steer procurement toward political allies.
• Donor-led efforts to increase transparency and oversight helped reduce certain corruption risks, particularly in contexts where domestic institutions lacked capacity. In these settings, donor controls often served as effective substitutes for weaker local mechanisms.
• However, reforms targeting only one stage of the procurement process risked shifting corrupt practices to less-regulated phases. This highlighted the need for comprehensive reform strategies, with indicators tailored to specific political and institutional contexts.

Impact and Implications

Public procurement accounted for around half of all public spending in developing countries and was a major channel for international development aid. Yet it remained highly vulnerable to corruption. This project helped to deepen understanding of how procurement processes were manipulated – and which interventions were most effective in reducing corruption risks. The findings contributed to efforts to safeguard public funds, improve service delivery, and strengthen trust in public institutions and markets.

Impact:

International Donors
The research team actively engaged with international donors throughout the project, sharing methods and findings in internal workshops with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). These engagements helped inform donor strategies on aid disbursement and procurement oversight, and supported advocacy for improved procurement data collection and monitoring practices at the national level.

The project had a significant influence on the World Bank’s Solutions and Innovations in Procurement (SIP) team, shaping their approach to identifying risks in Bank-financed contracts and supporting government-led risk management. The Sussex team also collaborated with the World Bank’s country office in Tanzania, co-organising a 2017 event in Dar es Salaam with the Tanzanian Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) and the Prevention and Combatting of Corruption Bureau, to build awareness of the potential of big data analytics.

National Governments
The research team worked directly with public procurement regulators in Jamaica and Uganda to co-develop online tools that enabled risk analysis of procurement data. These interactive portals – used by the Integrity Commission of Jamaica (ICJ) and Uganda’s Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority (PPDA) – supported the identification of systemic risks and high-risk transactions, leading to better-informed policy decisions and investigations.

Civil Society
To extend the reach and usability of the methodology, the team partnered with the African Maths Initiative (AMI), a Kenya-based NGO, to integrate the red flags methodology into R-Instat, an open-source data analysis tool designed for accessibility. Together, they delivered workshops in Tanzania, Ghana, and Uganda for maths students, civil society actors, and local researchers – building skills and promoting the use of procurement data for accountability and reform.

Research Team Members

• Liz Dávid-Barrett, Professor, University of Sussex; Director of the Centre for the Study of Corruption
• Mihály Fazekas, Assistant Professor, Central European University; Scientific Director, Government Transparency Institute